Margaret McChesney, RN is a community health nurse in Phoenix, Arizona whose car is her traveling office. Most of the families she and the other providers under her treat are hard to reach. They are rural or urban poor and migrant farm workers. McChesney marvels at how registries have improved her practice in so many ways. They allow her to determine which children are without health insurance so that she can assist their families in enrolling in Medicaid or the state s Children s Health Insurance Program.
Registries flag children with contra-indications for vaccines, such as drug allergies.
They save as much as 10 days working time each quarter in her reporting and record-keeping. They allow her to print a child s immunization record from her laptop s portable printer for the parents. She claims that using registries has boosted the immunization rate in her area from 46 percent in May of 1998 to over 90 percent by the end of that year. Alan Hinman, MD, MPH, another accomplished immunologist and former CDC Immunization Division Director who retired with the rank of Assistant Surgeon General served as moderator. Hinman, who is now at the Task Force for Child Survival and Development, closed the briefing with a review of immunization s federal funding history over the last five years and the anticipated cost of funding registries.