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For many, this month signifies the beginning of new experiences: a fresh school year, the eagerly awaited pumpkin-flavored treats, and new CoAg activities. It is also a month that marks a key event in my career. Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005, displacing thousands of people, including children, many of whom had to relocate to other states with no personal possessions, let alone a vaccination record. The state of Louisiana has been using LINKS since 2001, and thankfully, most school-aged children had a record in LINKS. In 2005, my job was working with schools in Idaho to implement school vaccination requirements. I won’t ever forget the call I received from an Idaho school that had recently enrolled several Katrina evacuees asking if there was any way I could find their records. Louisiana had enabled emergency access to LINKS for state health departments to query for evacuee records. At the same time, STC was piloting IIS-to-IIS query for STC clients to help providers and jurisdictions locate records from Louisiana. Because of these events, the students had vaccination records in IRIS, Idaho’s registry, in about five minutes. The school was in awe, and the parents were so relieved to have some form of a health record. While this event occurred nearly 20 years ago, we still don’t have ubiquitous data sharing between jurisdictions. We can do better! But we need to tell these stories to remind decision-makers and the public why we do the work that we do.
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Funding Update
As previously shared, we paused or stopped several activities due to funding reductions. Since then, CDC identified additional funds to support IIS activities in 2024 and 2025. We are grateful for the additional resources to continue most of the activities we paused, including:
- IZ Gateway Health Level 7 (HL7) conformance testing
- Immunization Integration Program (IIP)
- Epi Community of Practice
- User groups for Power BI, Smarty, and Tableau
We are working to resume these activities as quickly as possible and will share more information in the coming weeks.
August Highlights
The National Immunization Conference (NIC) took place August 12–14 in Atlanta, Georgia, and to kick off the week, AIRA and AIM co-hosted a successful networking event on August 11. Throughout the meeting, various topics were discussed, such as epidemiology and surveillance of vaccine-preventable diseases; vaccine equity and special populations; monitoring, assessment, evaluation; implementation and program management; general vaccinology; and strategies to improve vaccination coverage. These discussions highlighted the ongoing efforts and collaboration within the public health community to address current challenges and improve immunization outcomes.
Continuing the momentum, on August 26, AIRA hosted a Discovery Session on Advancing IIS Interoperability: The Local IG Digitization and Standardization Project Unveiled. Thank you to everyone who attended and contributed to this month’s webinar.
In case you missed it, the official save-the-date for the AIRA 2025 National Meeting has been shared! Mark your calendars for April 28–May 1. This year’s National Meeting will take place in Spokane, Washington, and will feature an additional day with pre-conference workshops, the opening plenary and keynote presentation, and the AIRA networking reception. We hope this extra time will allow us to deliver even more valuable content during our event.
Looking Ahead
- The National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC) meeting will be held September 12–13 in Washington, D.C.
- AIRA staff will be attending the HL7 Working Group Meeting (WGM) in Atlanta from September 22–27.
Wishing everyone a happy and healthy start to fall,
Rebecca Coyle, MSEd
Executive Director
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Save the Date | AIRA 2025 National Meeting
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Mark your calendars for an extraordinary experience in the Evergreen State! The AIRA 2025 National Meeting will take place April 28–May 1, 2025, in Spokane, Washington. This year, we are kicking things off a day early, with pre-conference workshops available on Monday morning. The official start of the meeting begins that afternoon with our opening plenary and keynote presentation, followed by the AIRA networking reception. Join us for another National Meeting, where knowledge is lush, ideas take root, and new connections grow! 🌲
P.S. Stay tuned—the call for abstracts and registration will open soon!
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ASTP/ONC’s HTI-2 Rule Published, AIRA Gathering Community Comments
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As you may have seen, ASTP/ONC (recently renamed the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology) published the Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: Patient Engagement, Information Sharing, and Public Health Interoperability Proposed Rule, also called HTI-2, in the Federal Register on Monday, August 5. This kicks off the formal 60-day comment period. AIRA will be gathering and consolidating comments across the IIS and immunization community, and we welcome your input. The rule covers proposed changes for EHR certification regarding immunization exchange (F)(1), as well as proposed Health IT for public health voluntary certification (F)(21), among many other topics.
You can access the proposed rule at the link above, or here. You can also submit your own jurisdictional/organizational comments here.
Schedule for comments to be submitted by AIRA:
- Monday, August 5 – Proposed rule published in Federal Register
- Wednesday, August 21 – HTI-2 was discussed at AIRA’s Standards and Interoperability Steering Committee (SISC) meeting at 1 p.m. ET
- Wednesday, September 4 – Comments due to AIRA – comments can be submitted to Rebecca Sandtveit at Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser.; it is especially helpful if submitters cite the page number and proposed rule passage along with their comments
- Wednesday, September 11 – Comments reviewed at AIRA’s SISC meeting at 1 p.m. ET
- Wednesday, September 18 – Consolidated comments will be shared with IIS community to be incorporated as appropriate into jurisdictional/organizational comments
- Friday, October 4 – All comments due to ASTP/ONC
We look forward to upcoming conversations on HTI-2. Thank you for your engagement, and happy reading! If you have questions about the proposed rule or the process, please reach out to Mary Beth Kurilo at Cette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser..
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A Webinar Brought to You by Our Diamond Corporate Partner Envision
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Register today for Envision’s webinar on Maximizing IIS Security Strategies.
AIRA will be hosting this collaborative webinar on Tuesday, September 17, from 1 to 2 p.m. ET.
During this webinar, you will learn more about:
- Strategies for effectively responding to partner organization security incidents to protect IIS data
- Strategies for leveraging third-party security audits
There will be time for questions and answers at the end of the webinar.
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Once you have registered, you will receive a confirmation email which contains links to add the meeting to your calendar.
This meeting will not be available in the AIRA Repository; however, there will be materials from the Moderna webinar available in the AIRA Repository.
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Public Health Informatics Fellowship Program Application Open
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The application period for the Public Health Informatics Fellowship Program (PHIFP) is open. The PHIFP will equip fellows with the following:
- On-the-job training for qualified professionals
- Opportunity to apply expertise in computer science, data analytics, and data science to public health to address current and future public health needs
- Through assignments at CDC, fellows work on advanced projects to enhance information systems that improve our nation’s health.
Apply from August 15, 2024 through November 1, 2024.
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AIRA Board Election Results
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The 2024 AIRA board election results are in! We had an excellent slate of highly qualified candidates, making this an extremely close election.
Directors Election
AIRA welcomes the following three new directors to the board:
- Laura Barrett from the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services was elected as an AIRA IIS board director.
- Kim Gulliver from the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment will fill the half-term vacancy created by John Robison’s resignation.
- Shannon Coleman from STChealth was elected as an AIRA non-IIS board director.
Officer Election
Per the AIRA Bylaws, officers are elected by the AIRA board. AIRA is pleased to announce the following officer election results:
- Marie Hartel from the Tennessee Department of Health was elected as AIRA's President-Elect.
- Steve Murchie from Envision Technology Partners was elected as AIRA's Treasurer Committee Chair.
The new AIRA board term begins October 1, 2024.
Congratulations to our newly elected officers and directors and thank you to our outgoing officers and directors!
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AIRA Employment Opportunities
There are no current opportunities at this time.
Opportunities for Independent Contractors
To be notified of future contracting opportunities, please sign up here.
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Check out the AIRA Calendar for upcoming events!
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Stay up to date on upcoming AIRA committees, board meetings, webinars, events, and more.
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The summer of games is not over.
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American Immunization Registry Association
1717 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Suite 1025
Washington, DC 20006
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© Copyright 2023, American Immunization Registry Association
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