Refugee Vaccination Project: Nursing, Medicine, Public Health and Community Organizations Collaborating to Improve Refugee Health

Jackson, Barbara M.

Sunday, 17 November 2013: 3:05 PM

Barbara M. Jackson, PhD, RN
Lansing School of Nursing, Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY
Ruth Carrico, PhD, RN, CIC
School of Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY

Learning Objective 1: Evaluate strategies for designing collaborative and innovative healthcare delivery models to refugees.

Learning Objective 2: Develop collaborative partnership models of immunization administration for disease prevention of vulnerable populations.

Interprofessional collaboration is critical to improving patient healthcare services. The Institute of Medicine declared that increasing collaboration among healthcare professionals improves client outcomes (2011). Barr, Koppel, Reeves, Hammick, and Freeth (2005) found that interprofessional education resulted in interprofessional collaboration, better health promotion and higher immunization rates. Opportunities for interpersonal education are both limited and hampered by different schedules, course objectives and segregation of professions. We have developed a partnership with two universities and public health, medicine, and nursing professionals to deliver vaccination services to refugees.

Currently, all adult refugees settling in Louisville receive vaccine education, interpretation services and required immunizations through the Refugee Vaccination Project. Bellarmine University Nursing and University of Louisville plus two local community organizations are collaborating to provide these services to refugees. Since the beginning of the program in October 2012, 483 refugees have been vaccinated through the Project. Additional data including numbers of vaccines, nurse and nursing student participation, and refugee information are also being collected. Vaccines are essential to promoting public health and this project has shown the potential for interprofessional collaboration to address this issue.

Healthcare professionals have minimal understanding about refugee healthcare needs since education opportunities are lacking in clinic-based patient care settings. Therefore, student understanding of cross-cultural needs in healthcare must be accomplished through varied initiatives such as student-staffed clinics; providing first-hand experience while filling the healthcare services gap experienced by refugees (Weissman, et. al 2012). The Refugee Vaccination Project as a healthcare delivery model is an innovative design while providing the refugee community with health education and the means to disease prevention. The project is successful in the approach to collaboration between healthcare specialties, neighboring universities and community partners. This model could easily be adopted by other programs. Recommendations for planning and implementation of such a program will be presented.

See more of: Community Collaborative Partnerships
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