CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Over 250 health care professionals, school nurses and teachers from across West Virginia gathered at the Charleston Civic Center Tuesday for a two-day Immunization Summit, which is being held in conjunction with the Kidstrong Conference.
The group will focus on how to keep children, adults and the community safe from vaccine-preventable diseases and how important immunizations are needed throughout a person’s lifespan.
More than 900 attendees and 70 vendors are expected to participate in the conference Tuesday and Wednesday.
Paula Fields, a nurse with the West Virginia Department of Education, said it began as a small conference for school nurses, but has grown over the years. School partners and people interested in school health have joined in this year’s theme, which is to build school and community partnerships.
Kidstrong, the largest statewide school conference in West Virginia, partnered with the West Virginia Immunization Network, the state Department of Education, state Department of Health and Human Resources and Marshall University’s School Health Technical Assistance Center to promote that health and wellness theme.
“Anytime you bring as many groups as possible that have one committed effort to understand healthy kids achieve better, healthy active kids are better learners,” said Joshua Grant, a coordinator with the state DOE.
Grant said they’ll have 12 break-out sessions as a way to learn and discuss how health and physical activity can be improved in schools. He said the sessions are set up by health leaders nationwide.
“This is really to bring in everything we learn this year and then to kick off this next school year,” said Grant, about why they chose to hold the conference earlier in the summer rather than later.
Jeff Neccuzi, director of immunization services with the state DOE, said one aspect they will be discussing at this year’s summit is the introduction of MyIR, a parental access module to the West Virginia Immunization Registry, that allows parents to register to view their children’s immunization records online, through a health care provider.
Neccuzi said the parent will then be allowed to print out those records and present them to the child’s school for enrollment, eliminating the need to make an extra doctor visit to obtain those records.
“It should simplify things and it certainly makes things easier for the boards of education, school nurses, the principals, everyone who works in the process of enrolling children for school,” he said.
Neccuzi said MyIR is expected to become available at all provider offices by early next year.
The West Virginia Immunization Network is a statewide coalition of nearly 300 public and private sector members who work to create an environment statewide where ever resident is appropriately immunized. To learn more about vaccine-preventable diseases, visit www.immunizenow.org.