Extension Collaborative on Immunization Teaching and Engagement: May 2021 Immunization Education Programs Spotlight

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Cooperative Extension programs are making an impact on communities across the country with immunization education efforts, particularly with vaccine-hesitant individuals. Activities include mobile vaccination clinics in partnership with local health organizations, social media campaigns, the development of online toolkits promoting research-based immunization information, and more. This month, the EXCITE program is highlighting how an immunization education program in Virginia implemented a hotline phone registration system that now receives 28% of all vaccination registrants in the county, and how a team in Louisiana is using social media to promote COVID-19 vaccination fact sheets.

The Extension Foundation, in cooperation with the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy (ECOP), through an Interagency Agreement (IAA) with the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are funding the Cooperative Extension System (CES) to address health disparities among rural and other underserved communities. This initiative is called the Extension Collaborative on Immunization Teaching & Engagement (EXCITE).

The EXCITE program serves all land-grant universities through two-phases of activities: system-wide engagement with the CDC’s Vaccinate with Confidence communication campaign, and adult immunization education pilot projects.

Those across Cooperative Extension working in the area of Immunization Education have been registering their programs in the National Registry of Cooperative Extension Programs and Assets (NRCEPA). The NRCEPA is a new tool made available through the Extension Foundation to create a living database of Cooperative Extension programs, projects, and curriculums to rapidly identify existing work across the system for national funding opportunities. Currently, the NRCEPA is in pilot with the EXCITE program.

For May 2021, EXCITE is highlighting two programs registered in the NRCEPA that are working in the area of immunization education:

Madison County COVID Vaccination Clinics

The Virginia Cooperative Extension in Madison County worked with the local health districts and hospitals to create a county-wide COVID Vaccine hotline registration system and vaccine clinic to target the county’s underserved population. By implementing a hotline phone registration system, they were able to decrease registration barriers which allowed for farmworkers, elderly with limited or no internet access, and those with limited English proficiency to register for vaccines. Due to this innovative and efficient effort, Madison county has now administered 4466 vaccines at the clinic with 28% of the registrants coming through the vaccine hotline. The Virginia Cooperative Extension will continue to build on its trusted relationship with the public to implement strategies to vaccinate hard to reach and hesitant populations.

In the NRCEPA, this program has offered several digital assets to assist other Cooperative Extension programs. This includes their vaccine appointment form template, COVID-19 Vaccine 101 factsheets, infographics, and sample advertisements.

COVID-19 Vaccine Education/Outreach Initiative – Southern University

In Louisiana, Southern University Extension Agency was facing the issue of low vaccine registration turnout due to medical mistrust among their community members. Being a trusted community resource, Southern University was able to combat this issue by utilizing their social platforms and website to inform and educate on COVID-19 and vaccinations. Southern University used pre-existing information and data from the CDC to create fact-sheets for their website, as well as the CDC social media guide to launch campaigns and webinars on the COVID-19 vaccine. This outreach and education program was an initiative created to educate and advise their underserved population on vaccines and the need for immunization.

In the NRCEPA, this program has offered several digital assets to assist other Cooperative Extension programs. This includes several infographics and fact sheets.

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Extension.org Email Aliases to be Retired

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This message is a call to all those using an extension.org email address. As a reminder, everyone who ever created an “eXtension ID” was issued an address such as name@extension.org. Many of you may be using your @extension.org email address as a simple alias or forwarding address. If you are using your extension.org email address in that manner, then you should know that on July 1, 2021, that email redirection will cease because we are retiring the legacy application that manages these aliases. 

What You Can Do

It is important that you check and update your email signature blocks, your reply-to addresses, logins on third party sites, or any other communications and publications to be sure you are no longer using such addresses.

In some cases, there may be very logical reasons why you would want or need to retain this address and use it for an actual email box: 

  • You may represent a working group of some sort that needs an address representing the group and not an individual within the group. 
  • Or, your use of the extension.org email address is so embedded in your history that you would find it difficult to remove.  
  • Or, you are working on a project for the Extension Foundation where you really need to hold yourself out as being a representative of the Foundation.

If you feel it important that you retain this address, then please let us know by email to contact-us@extension.org.  We can accommodate those needs on a case by case basis. Just let us know your needs.

What this Means

The People (people.extension.org) application will be decommissioned (taken offline) on July 1, 2021. This is because the legacy tools this technology once supported have also been decommissioned over the past few years in favor of upgraded tools that do not require eXtension IDs.

Connect Extension (https://connect.extension.org) has provided greatly enhanced capability for bringing together networks, but uses its own authentication system. The new Ask Extension platform (ask2.extension.org) also does not require an eXtension ID.

Questions or Concerns?

Please reach out to the Extension Foundation Solutions Team at contact-us@extension.org.

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RFA: New Technologies for Ag Extension Accelerator Program Year 3 Projects

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REQUEST FOR APPLICATIONS
Accelerator Program Year 3 Projects
Funded by a Cooperative Agreement with the USDA-NIFA New Technologies for Ag Extension Program awarded to Oklahoma State University

SUMMARY: Project/program team leaders are invited to apply to this NTAE Program Accelerator. By the end of one year, accelerated programs are stronger, better-resourced, and more easily adopted or adapted by others across the Cooperative Extension system to serve the needs of people and communities.  For one year, project leaders and teams are partnered with the Extension Foundation and are coached to identify new possibilities and strengthen their planned impact. Each team receives support to create materials and experiences that engage Extension resources to speed development and generate a change where it is desired. In addition to stipend funding, the full value of this program is in the accelerator experience. Awardees can expect robust and productive interaction with a group of catalysts and key informants in a mentoring role to help the leader and their team grow professionally over the course of a one- year partnership. 

AWARD DATES: September 1, 2021 -August 31, 2022

ELIGIBILITY: The RFA for NTAE Year 3 Projects is open to all Land Grant University Cooperative Extension professionals from 1862, 1890, and 1994 institutions. LGUs may submit more than one project nomination. 

AWARD: Approximately eight projects will be awarded.

  1. Awardees receive $10,000 in the form of a stipend and/or salary and benefits of up to 10K. Indirect costs are not allowed on these funds. Recipients of this funding can be the team leader, team members, or support personnel.
  2. Awardees receive the mentorship of an Extension Foundation Catalyst throughout the 1-year Accelerator Program.
  3. Awardees receive support from Key Informants that is customized to each project’s needs including, but not limited to, team leadership development, communications and marketing/market research, evaluation planning, partnership development, digital engagement, professional development delivery, and publishing of project methodologies and support materials.
  4. The one-year journey for the project leader and team will be unique. Please expect the time commitment for the team leader to be as much as 10 to 20 percent (4-8 hours per week) on average over the course of one year. 

REQUIREMENTS: 

  • All applications must align with the USDA Strategic Goals USDA Strategic goals and align with Extension Committee on Organization and Policy (ECOP) program priorities (ECOP) Program Priorities.
  • Projects must be in the early stages of maturity and have a high potential for making a significant local/state impact, and by providing a model for adoption by Extension professionals regionally or nationwide. This means the project is likely to have objectives completed, audiences identified, potential outcomes identified, and implementation planned or in an early stage.
  • Each application should identify a team leader (a Fellow) for the project who will serve as the primary contact.
  • Teams must have at least three (3) members including a project/team leader.
  • All applications must have the support of the Extension Director/Administrator.

TIMELINE: 

  • May 10, 2021 Application Workshop for those interested in strengthening their application
  • May 12, 2021 Application Workshop for those interested in strengthening their application
  • July 16, 2021 Applications Due
  • August 13 Approximate time for award notifications  

AWARD DECISIONS: Award decisions will be considered final. Award decisions will be published on the Extension Foundation Website and emailed to each institution individually.

 

AWARD RECIPIENTS: Awardees will participate in quarterly project meetings along with meetings as needed to work with Catalysts and access Key Informant resources. Quarterly reports are required. 

 

APPLICATION ACCESS: The application is available at https://applyextension.smapply.io/ The proposal will be submitted using an online application linked to  our Application Portal. Applications can be initiated, saved in progress, and completed at a later date. If you do not already have an account in our system, the first step will be to obtain an account by using the registration link in the Application Portal. You can invite other team collaborators to assist in building and submitting your application.

APPLICATION GUIDE: The Application Guide will prepare you to submit your application and provide resources to frame your proposal.  NTAE Application Guide

 

CONTACT INFORMATION: 

Tira Adelman

Extension Foundation

Grants and Project Manager

tiraadelman@extension.org

FURTHER INFORMATION: 

The New Technologies for Agricultural Extension (NTAE) cooperative agreement with the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) through a partnership with Oklahoma State University will enter its third year on September 1, 2021. A key program in the cooperative agreement is the Program Accelerator. The Program Accelerator is a unique partnership between a project/program team and the resources of the Extension Foundation for a year of rapid growth and progress resulting in expanding the team’s local impact and national potential. Our unique methods and team of catalysts and key informants work uniquely with each team to produce scalable, better resourced, and more effective programs and community-based initiatives through a one-year boost of additional support. You can learn more about NTAE projects taking advantage of the Program Accelerator at https://impact.extension.org/ntae/.

Applications for the NTAE Program Accelerator for Year 3 will need to align with the USDA Strategic goals and be early-stage/high potential projects. In Year 3, projects are also sought to align with the Extension Committee on Policy (ECOP) Program Priorities to bring greater support for projects serving multiple national initiatives.  At least one proposal is desired that advances the understanding of an engaged university. Such evidence includes 1) partner programming with nontraditional university units (colleges of liberal arts, engineering, medical school, etc.) and/or 2) co-creation of project design with partners, audience, and/or community members.

 

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This website is supported in part by New Technologies for Ag Extension (funding opportunity no. USDA-NIFA-OP-010186), grant no. 2023-41595-41325 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Extension Foundation.

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