Each year, the Onslow County School System, through the Department of Student Services and school nurses, works with the Onslow County Health Department to provide vaccinations for students throughout the district. State law requires student immunizations be up to date, and failure to do so will result in students being suspended from school and parents missing work. Through a combined and coordinated effort, this team was able to immunize 1,430 students, providing 1,897 vaccines.   

In a letter to Brendan Gartner, director of Student Services, Onslow County Health Director Angela Lee thanked the student services department for their support of the Immunization School Outreach program, noting, “By providing the vaccines in our schools, we have increased state immunization compliance, decreased the number of school suspensions and lost days of work for parents, and most of all, minimized the spread of vaccine preventable illnesses in our youth.” 

In her letter, Lee went on to thank the school system’s nurses and school staff for handing out and picking up pre-printed vaccine packets, as well as aiding with shot records and attending to students as they received their vaccines. The three visits made by the county immunization team were “seamless due to the care each of your schools took to prepare the students and bring them back and forth to class.”