Jurisdiction
North Dakota
Strategy
Create a state-wide COVID-19 vaccine locator tool to supplement the federal vaccine locator tool (vaccine.gov) until the federal site was fully updated.
Challenge
Supplies were limited when the COVID-19 vaccine was made available in December 2020. Immunization programs had to prioritize who would receive the vaccine, and roll-out was often done in phases, so communication of this information with the public was vital. Although the CDC and the federal COVID-19 task force were working on updating the nationwide vaccine locator tool, it needed to be more robust to provide the necessary information for COVID-19 vaccinations.
Solution
The North Dakota Department of Health developed a state-specific COVID-19 vaccine locator tool using Microsoft Power BI. The vaccine locator tool used provider enrollment data and North Dakota Immunization Inventory System data to populate information. Further, vaccine providers were required to fill out a weekly survey indicating their current COVID-19 vaccination phase and provide any special vaccination instructions. The tool was made available online to the public in January 2021 and remained available through April 2021. The North Dakota vaccine locator was kept online even after vaccine.gov was fully updated because it provided vaccination phase information unavailable on vaccine.gov. The North Dakota vaccine locator was removed once the COVID-19 vaccine supply began to exceed public demand.
Outcome
Through the COVID-19 vaccine locator tool, the North Dakota Department of Health could communicate vaccine availability, eligibility, and scheduling details to the public. The same model was used again in July 2022 to communicate Monkeypox vaccine availability.
Supplemental Materials