Vaccination strategy aims to reduce preventable disease and deaths

NHS England has launched a new vaccination strategy that aims to improve access and uptake through an expansion of online services, delivery in convenient local places and targeted outreach, and a ‘more joined-up’ approach to prevention and vaccination.

The approach will focus on outcomes – reducing morbidity and mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases, by increasing vaccination uptake and coverage, and reducing disparity in uptake. The strategy also aims to provide the flexibility needed to respond to future emergent disease challenges.

NHSE says: ‘England has historically performed well across both life-course and seasonal vaccinations and has effectively responded to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease. We achieve among the highest rates of flu vaccination in the world; our NHS COVID-19 vaccination programme is rightly held up as a success after delivering over 156 million vaccinations to date; and it is estimated that the introduction of HPV vaccination for school children could prevent over 110,000 cases of cancer by 2058.

‘In recent years, however, our performance has been in decline. We have not hit population coverage targets for childhood immunisations. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the UK had eliminated measles in 2016 but we have since lost this status. We do not perform well everywhere, with significant variation in uptake and coverage between different communities that can often reflect wider health inequalities. For example, MMR vaccination rates across local authority areas in England vary by as much as 22%. Urgent action is required on the part of local health and care systems to bring parity to all vaccination programmes, given that in recent years the population and the NHS has necessarily focussed on COVID-19 vaccinations.’

To meet the strategy’s goals, NHSE wants to see every part of the country provide vaccination services that are:

• High quality, convenient to access and tailored to the needs of local people. Everyone should have easy access to vaccination, and people should be supported to understand which vaccinations they are eligible to receive
• Supplemented by target outreach to increase uptake in underserved populations
• Delivered in a joined up way by integrated teams to improve patient experience and deliver value for money
  
  

NHS England. Vaccination strategy: Shaping the future of vaccination and immunisation services; December 2023. https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/nhs-vaccination-strategy/