Improving Pediatric Immunization Series Completion in Rural American Indian Communities

Safe Healthy Children seeks to improve the immunization completion and coverage levels in American Indian children in the Great Plains Area. The project uses a multifaceted approach that seeks to effect change from three different angles. 1. Mobilize the rural American (AI) communities in an effort to create a climate that encourages and empowers parents to immunize their children for the benefit of the community and tribe as whole. 2.  The project engages providers in creating system change to reduce provider level barriers to under immunization and immunization timeliness and encourages them to adopt best practices and evidence informed strategies to improve immunization coverage. 3.  The project seeks to mitigate patient level barriers and reduce parent hesitancy through education to reduce fears, dispel myths, and empower parents to choose immunization.