Health visitors will be used to boost uptake of childhood vaccination from next year, NHS England has said.
This forms part of plans to reduce pressure on A&E departments, unveiled in last week’s urgent and emergency care plan.
Pilots of health visitors doing catch-up vaccinations were first announced last year, although the new plans appear to go further still.
ICBs have until the end of this month to develop plans for how to ‘strengthen the childhood vaccination offer’.
It said that ‘as a minimum’ these should set out how ‘GPs and school-aged immunisation providers will increase vaccination rates, working with local directors of public health’; and how ‘local campaigns will target those in clinical risk groups’.
And it added: ‘To support this, we will ask some systems to test the use of health visitors to administer childhood flu vaccinations and other routine immunisations for eligible children.
‘These systems will test the feasibility and value for money of different approaches and provide evidence to inform national roll-out from 2026/27.’
To prevent A&E departments becoming overwhelmed, ‘vaccine uptake among children is one of the most impactful interventions, with every thousand childhood vaccinations saving around 4 hospital admissions’, NHS England said.
RCGP has previously said any new vaccination models need to see close working with GP practices to be successful.
Also in last week’s UEC plan, NHS England said it aims to ‘reduce the effects of flu’ on vulnerable patients and health and care services when respiratory viruses surge by:
- expanding the use of the National Booking Service for flu vaccination to make more appointments available, including keeping it open until the end of the flu campaign in March
- developing the ‘flu walk-in finder’ so that, from October 2025, patients can easily look up when they can walk into a community pharmacy to get a vaccination
The plan also detailed an aim for all those in the older adult catch-up cohort (aged 75 to 79) to have been offered an RSV vaccination by 31 August this year.
‘The aim is to achieve 70% for the catch-up cohorts and 60% in the routine cohort during 2025/26. RSV vaccination provides multi-year protection, so those vaccinated now will have protection this coming winter.
‘The UK Health Security Agency continues to analyse and evaluate these new programmes, with early assessment of the RSV vaccination programme in older adults showing it led to a 30% reduction in the confirmed RSV hospital admission rate among eligible 75 to 79-year-olds,’ the plan said.
On publication of the plan last week, GP leaders complained that general practice barely got a mention and no additional funding.
Health visitors? Grow up. They’re even thinner on the ground than GP’s and are buried under a ton of child protection around here
What’s new? Didn’t they used to do them?