Case Study: Midlands’ vaccination support bulletin

What is Midlands’ Vaccination Support Bulletin?

The Midlands’ Vaccination Support Bulletin is a short, informative e-bulletin that is shared fortnightly (previously weekly) with COVID-19 vaccination teams. As far as we are aware, we are the only region to provide this level of support.

What were the aims of Midlands’ Vaccination Support Bulletin?

The bulletin was developed to support frontline teams across the whole of the Midlands, to safely and efficiently manage the deployment of the COVID Vaccination programme. We needed to share information, guidance, Government updates and respond to queries from clinical leads who are managing vaccination centres, as well as hospital hubs and care homes.

What did we do and how did we do it?

Working collaboratively with those listed below, Health Innovation West Midlands (HIWM) and Health Innovation East Midlands have supported the design and development of the bulletin, meeting weekly to discuss and determine the focus and attending weekly clinical reference group meetings to extract queries from clinical colleagues across the region, which is often shared widely as a Q&A piece. The bulletins were initially sent weekly due to the rapid rollout of the vaccination programme and the constant need for regular updates and guidance, however this has now been reduced to fortnightly based on stakeholder need.

Who has been involved:

Christina Watson and Margaret Wooley – Health Innovation East Midlands

Daniel Smith – Clinical Fellow, NHS England & Improvement – Midlands

Lesley McFarlane – Screening and Immunisation Manager, Clinical, Public Health England within NHS E&I – Midlands

What were the outcomes?

We are currently compiling an evaluation to understand the impact this bulletin has had on frontline vaccination teams. We have received positive feedback from the NHS England and Improvement communications team, who now share our bulletin with their distribution list too.