Enhancing community partnerships during a public health emergency: the school-located vaccination clinics model in Kanawha County, WV during the 2009 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic.

Broad based community support is vital in developing a comprehensive national strategy to protect the public's health prior to, during and after a disaster such as pandemic influenza. When disaster strikes, the successful response is often dependent upon the degree of collaboration, coordination, and shared decision making occurring among a wide-ranging group of public and private stakeholders in the community. Since these preparedness and response activities must occur at a local level, the degree to which a certain community can become resilient after an event is directly dependent upon the success of the response activities. In order to protect its citizens, the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department (KCHD) led a comprehensive community based response to the 2009 Influenza A (H1N1) pandemic. By organizing a high level strategic team consisting of major community stakeholders, KCHD was able to develop broad based community support for its mitigation and countermeasure delivery strategies. The timely enhancement of the existing community partnerships enabled us to successfully conduct several response activities with local community support including school-located vaccination (SLV) clinics. We describe the process, results and challenges faced during our SLV clinics campaign which resulted in exceptionally high vaccination rates for school aged children compared to other jurisdictions across the nation. We also discuss how such partnerships can be sustained resulting in resilient communities and mention some strategies for those contemplating such partnerships in future public health emergency.