Situation
Founded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in collaboration with SPARC (Sickness Prevention Achieved through Regional Collaboration), Vote & Vax was created to assist local vaccination providers in launching flu-shot clinics at or near polling places on election days.
For the November 2008 election, Vote & Vax wanted to grow their regional outreach into a national program to help facilitate flu-shot clinics at polling places nationwide. In order to achieve this goal, they knew they needed to step up their web efforts to recruit providers and educate the public.
Solution Design
To get the process rolling, AW Systems identified the unique needs of the two primary audiences Vote & Vax was trying to reach:
- Health Organizations:Vote & Vax needed a way to communicate with potential clinic providers and get them interested in the program. Once a health organization came on board, Vote & Vax would also need a way to provide information and resources to help the organization successfully set up and market their clinic to their local communities. In addition, Vote & Vax wanted to create a forum where participating organizations could share ideas from coast to coast.
- Voters & The Media:Leading up to Election Day, Vote & Vax would need a way to promote the clinics, reach out to voters, and provide resources for the media. Our objectives were to give voters the ability to quickly and easily find the nearest flu-shot clinic, as well as create a central location where the media could find information about the program.
The biggest challenge with the Vote & Vax project was timing, as we had a hard-and-fast date for when the clinics had to be up and running: November 4, 2008. We needed to be sure we had enough lead time for potential providers to find out about the program, get all the necessary paperwork filled out, set up their clinics, and promote their clinics to voters.
Solution Design
Our first step was to prioritize the content in order of importance and relevance to each audience in the months leading up to Election Day.
Based on the discoveries during the Solution Design process, we divided the web development portion of the project into three phrases:
Phase 1
Launch a public site that would speak primarily to potential providers. This site would give providers an overview of the Vote & Vax objective, information on why the program was so important, and resources to get the ball rolling on sponsoring a flu-shot clinic.
Phase 2
Launch an extranet for registered clinic providers that would give providers access to important marketing items not available to the general public, the ability to post clinic locations and hours, and the opportunity to connect and share ideas with clinic providers nationwide. The extranet would be our outlet for creating a special community for participating providers and getting them excited about the program.
Concurrently, the Vote & Vax administrators were provided with a system for keeping track of providers and their clinics. This data was used to manage access to the extranet, allowing for a unified approach that prevented data re-keying, as well as promoted data and content management efficiencies at Vote & Vax . Administrators could also use the registration database to send email blasts to cultivate relationships and quickly convey important information to providers about policy changes.
Phase 3
"The website and extranet that AW Systems developed gave us infinite scalability and the capacity to instantly communicate with providers and voters from coast to coast. They were an integral part of our success story."
Douglas Shenson,
MD MPHProgram Director
Extend the public site to provide resources for voters and the media. The information would include resources to help the public learn about the program and find Vote & Vax clinics in their communities.
The public website and the provider extranet that AW Systems developed for Vote & Vax were powered by Content Slammer, which made it easy to publish content as well as created a database of participating providers. This provider data fed directly into the extranet, acting as the user management area for the extranet.
Each provider also had their own profile page on the extranet where they could manage the information for their clinic locations. Instead of having multiple places to manage content or having to train employees on diverse systems, Vote & Vax was able to manage all of their mission-critical information in one place, which also eased their administrative costs.
Results
Come Election Day, Vote & Vax achieved their goal, with flu-shot clinics taking place at or near polling sites in 42 states and the District of Columbia. In recognition of their efforts, they were honored with the Immunization Excellence Award at the National Influenza Vaccine Summit sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and the American Medical Association.