Guest Post: 4 Steps to Manage COVID-19 Vaccinations in School Districts

September 1, 2021

This guest blog comes from Qualtrics, an easy-to-use web-based survey tool to conduct survey research, evaluations and other data collection activities. AASA partnered with them for our COVID-19 School Response Dashboard.

4 Steps to Manage COVID-19 Vaccinations in School Districts

With school districts around the U.S. managing the complexities of COVID-19 vaccines, education leaders are setting strategies for how to set clear vaccination and/or testing policies and enabling staff and students (via caregivers) to quickly and easily confirm their vaccination status. Here are four steps to organize your school system to respond to the latest developments and safety standards of the pandemic.

Step #1 — Establish the right policies to support school communities

Listening to your community and building trust are now more important than ever, and correlates directly with the success of any new vaccination status management system or policy.

According to a Qualtrics study of over 1000 U.S. adults, most families who can send their children to school in person will send them to school. To maintain the trust families are placing in their schools, listening to them and your staff will correlate directly with the success of any prospective COVID-19 vaccination policy or management system.

Given the urgent need to build trust between communities and schools, leaders must think about what policies and solutions they can implement quickly and easily to solicit important health information from stakeholders, all while making the process as simple, easy, and private as possible. 

Before implementing any kind of vaccination status management solution, it’s important that schools and districts establish the right approaches and build around them.

Make it easy to participate

Whatever the solution, it must be easy to use and access. App-based tools that can be used via mobile, laptop or desktop, regardless of where or when will make it incredibly simple for staff and families to submit their digital vaccination certification or update their current status. This could also include a single portal with seamless workflows, combined with backend systems for vaccine scheduling, attestation, testing, and symptom checking, for example.

Educate the community and clearly explain the process

Ensuring staff and families are informed about new vaccination verification policies and potential solutions will help to establish buy-in and reduce friction throughout. It isn’t just about providing resources to help educate, but also about giving them the opportunity to ask questions, provide feedback and be involved. Transparency is key and ultimately leads to better outcomes and understanding.

Create a culture of listening

Vaccination mandates have shown to be polarizing topics in many communities. This moment is both a challenge and an opportunity for school systems to operate with even greater empathy and understanding. By building a culture of listening into vaccination policies and using the appropriate tools and solutions, it becomes much easier to glean insight and create more engaged communities.

Stay ready for change

If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that changes happen fast and often unexpectedly. Over the next few years, it’s highly likely that vaccination requirements, mandates, and even certifications will change. As decisions change regarding required mitigation methods, having a flexible solution can help school systems respond at the speed required to keep pace with these changes.

Step #2: Leverage the Right Solutions

As COVID-19 regulations and policies continue to rapidly change at every level, school leaders are working tirelessly to keep up with the latest legislation and compliance.

Some systems have systems and policies to manage vaccination status, masks, contact tracing and testing. However, many lack the means to securely capture and organize this kind of information, or do so in a way that’s easy and comfortable for their stakeholders. They also may not be flexible enough to keep up with the current pace of change. Some also do not have the level of sophistication to easily track connections between students and their family members who provide health information on their behalf.

Qualtrics has a solution that can maintain compliance, save time, and run on an automated basis to build greater efficiencies, effectiveness, and trust. 

Step #3: Confirm stakeholder vaccination status quickly and easily

The Qualtrics Vaccination & Testing Manager enables school systems to confirm staff and student (via family) vaccination status, ongoing test results, and screen for COVID-19 symptoms - all in one single platform. The lightweight and no-code setup enables districts to get started in days, not months, and has the flexibility to adapt to future needs and changing regulations.

Stakeholders can easily and confidentially confirm their COVID-19 vaccination status — all they need to do is upload their vaccination cards, digital certificate(s) or exemptions via the preferred digital channels (email, text or webpage).

And as a solution with minimal administrative overhead and automated workflows, it’s easy to guide staff leaders through the process — meaning less work for human resources staff and other district leaders. Qualtrics’ Vaccination & Testing Manager is secure by design, with built-in features that keep protected health information and vaccination information separate. Qualtrics is FedRAMP and HITRUST compliant, and configurable to meet HIPAA requirements. The solution will also include vaccine verification options to confirm information about vaccinations if needed.

Step #4: Consolidate school and district COVID operations

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Qualtrics has worked with hundreds of organizations to reach 100M+ citizens across 25,000 COVID programs that span screening, appointment scheduling, testing, and vaccination status management.

We’re seeing a few districts across the U.S. require vaccinations for all or part of their staff communities — and in some cases, their eligible student populations as well.

Whether vaccinations are required or optional, districts have the opportunity to streamline operations for all COVID-19 protocols into one system. As the means to confirm school stakeholder vaccination status becomes increasingly important, systems across the U.S. should be able to implement student and staff centered vaccination status and confirmation solutions that are robust, flexible, and ready for any challenges that may come.

Questions? Contact Byron Adams, Education Industry Advisor, byrona@qualtrics.com