August 2008 - Town Hall Meeting

Immunization Registry Town Hall Meeting

The Houston Area Immunization Partnership (HAIP) aims to eradicate vaccine preventable disease by developing and coordinating our community’s resources through public and private partnerships. One of the area’s core resources is the Houston-Harris County Immunization Registry, which has contributed significantly to protecting our community from vaccine preventable disease. We believe that the HHCIR has been an inarguable success, increasing provider participation and increasing the number of Houston area children being immunized.

HHCIR is owned by the City of Houston and operated by Texas Children’s Hospital, with support from the Houston Area Immunization Partnership. The City of Houston has made a policy decision to relinquish its ownership of the Houston Harris County Immunization Registry (HHCIR) and transition to ImmTrac, the statewide immunization registry. Following this decision, representatives of Texas Children's Hospital, the Houston Department of Health and Human Services, the Houston Area Immunization Partnership and the Texas Department of State Health Services have partnered together to develop and implement a plan to transition HHCIR users to ImmTrac. The parties have agreed that the goal of the transition is to ensure that it does not result in a decrease in the level of provider participation, the level of support for users or the number of children participating in a registry. Future uses of HHCIR are under review and input from the community is sought as this process unfolds.

The Houston Area Immunization Partnership will continue to support and deliver the best services and tools to the Houston community and act in the best interest of Houstonians in all of our projects, including HHCIR. We believe the local registry is a vital resource for our community, and is it therefore important that the integrity of the data in the current system is maintained while a transition to ImmTrac is planned and implemented. Houston Area Immunization Partnership remains committed to ongoing support of the operations of the Houston-Harris County Immunization Registry during the transition to protect the community investment and to ensure the highest possible standards for our community.