Cooperative Extension Service Immunization Education Project Immunization Education Fellow

This project is a collaborative effort among the Extension Committee on Policy (ECOP), , eXtension, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  It grew out of efforts undertaken by the ECOP Health Innovation Task Force. eXtension anticipates receiving funding for Immunization Education efforts.  Key Extension leaders on this project are Dr. Roger Rennekamp, Dr. Michelle Rodgers, Dr. Caroline Henney, Ms. Ali Mitchell Dunigan and Dr. Chris Geith.  This project will allow CDC and the Cooperative Extension System to address health disparities among rural and other underserved communities by facilitating discussions at the community level to address barriers and concerns about COVID-19, flu and other adult vaccinations.  It is designed to help increase connections and communication between the community and health care practices, as well as increase accessibility and acceptability of local vaccination clinics and opportunities with the goal to and mobilize communities to implement public health programs to reduce health disparities, especially in rural areas. The four broad areas of emphasis for this project are:

• A National Assessment
  • Create a landscape report through a national assessment of current activities, locations and delivery of extension immunization education, community dialogue, and the cooperative delivery of immunization clinics.  Timeline:   April-July 2021 
• Vaccinate with Confidence National Campaign
  • Work with all 111 LGUs who are eligible to apply for funding to support their customization and deployment of the Vaccinate with Confidence Campaign. The package includes materials from the CDC, professional development offerings by the Vaccinate with Confidence technical assistance team available to all LGU’s and funding. LGU’s will complete a standardized and simple online application organized around a rubric to ensure funding priorities, such as serving underserved audiences and collecting standard data.  This information will be built into an application form briefly requiring a description of their planned implementation and their planned budget.  
• An Impact Collaborative Summit
  • Work with eXtension Foundation to offer an Impact Collaborative Summit to develop opportunities for immunization education and clinics utilizing Extension resources, staff and locations as well as their partnerships with local health education resources, staff and immunization locations.  This Summit will help potential pilot recipients incubate and plan to accelerate opportunities for immunization education in rural and underserved communities.   Timeline:  April 2021.
• Implement immunization education and clinic pilots, community dialogues, and the cooperative delivery of immunization clinics. Timeline:  May 2021-March 2022.
  • Pilots will test out immunization education programs, community dialogue frameworks, and clinic models in rural and underserved communities that will include data collection and use of common metrics for reporting.
  • A non-research report of what is learned will be created and shared with the Cooperative Extension System and collaborative leaders of this project. This report is to be a brief report and summary of the pilots from the pilot leaders. 

This project is seeking an Immunization Education Fellow who will work collaboratively with the Project Director and Assistant Project Director of the Immunization Education Project. This will be a one year buyout from a land grant university for approximately 10% time.   eXtension will serve as the principal investigator for the project and eXtension will serve as a backbone for the project efforts. 

The work of the fellows will focus on building the capacity and expanding the portfolio of the Cooperative Extension System’s work focused on health and well being.  Much of this will be accomplished through a Connect Extension subgroup where fellows will work as a team to foster identification and sharing of programmatic resources, expertise and collaboration around priority themes determined by Roger Rennekamp. This position will report to Dr. Roger Rennekamp.  

• Engage Connect Extension group members weekly in planned activities such as learning circles, webinars, cafes, dialogs, and chat events. 
• Create content that encourages engagement of members such as blog posts, forum questions and surveys related to Immunization Education. 
• Catalyze the growth and effectiveness of the Immunization Education community on the Connect Extension digital platform.   
• Develop a tagging vocabulary in Connect Extension to make resources easy to find. 
• Design and host at least three national professional development online events to the Cooperative Extension System with eXtension; for example, an action dialog or a webinar.
• Report monthly on group engagement to Roger Rennenkamp.
• This position will work remotely.  Knowledge and experience with virtual work and computer skills are needed for this position.

The projected timeline for this position is  April 1, 2021 through March 30, 2022: (dependent upon project funding)

February 18 until position is filled:  Accept letters of interest and resumes

April 1, 2021: Start date for Immunization Fellow

April 1, 2021: Official start for the Project

If there are questions, please contact Dr. Roger Rennekamp Ph.D., Extension Health Director, at rogerrennekamp@extension.org

Persons interested in this position should apply here:  https://form.jotform.com/210485133469154

Contact Brenna Kotar, eXtension Foundation at ceoassistant@extension.org with questions pertaining to the application.