From 1st April 2025, IntraHealth became the sole provider of NHS Greater Manchester’s school-aged vaccination services as part of a new integrated vaccination and immunisation service (IVIS) with a 5 year contract.
Previously, different teams delivered vaccinations across the ten areas of Greater Manchester.
From April, all school-aged vaccinations (HPV, Td/IPV (3 in 1 teenage booster), MenACWY (meningitis and septicaemia), school flu, and MMR catch up from across the city region will be delivered by NHS Community Services provider, IntraHealth.
IntraHealth have a track record in delivering school immunisations across the country, with Greater Manchester working closely with them to deliver school flu successfully over the past several years. As part of their new role IntraHealth will focus on reducing health inequalities in the city region and work closely with communities to engage and improve uptake.
The introduction of IntraHealth as the sole provider, comes following a full independent review of the current service and possible service models after a decline in Greater Manchester vaccine uptake amongst school children over the past 5 years.
The new integrated vaccination and immunisation service model with IntraHealth at the helm, is being introduced to make vaccinations in schools a much simpler and more effective process with the aim of achieving an uptake of more than 90% – aligning closely with NHS England’s national vaccination strategy.
A single point of contact will streamline/make the process easier for schools, parents and young people – ensuring children are fully up-to-date with their vaccinations.
It also allows for extra resources to be directed to areas with additional need or lower uptake – with a dedicated improving uptake officer to support with addressing health inequalities that might prevent some groups from accessing immunisation and a team available to mobilise in the event of local outbreaks.
Dr Helen Wall, Clinical Director for Population Health at NHS Greater Manchester said:
“We welcome IntraHealth on board to run IVIS in Greater Manchester, as it marks a really positive change in the way that we deliver vaccine services to school children.
The delivery of immunisations in schools is a vital service to protect the health of our children now and as they grow up. However, multiple providers led to different ways to book, duplicated paperwork and complicated booking and follow up systems – making it confusing for both the schools and the families there.
By bringing all the services into one new fully integrated service model, it will not only make the service much simpler, resilient and cohesive. All of which we believe will help increase the uptake of immunisations in our schools.
We have no doubt that IntraHealth’s experience in this field will help us make this new way of working a success, having already successfully delivered the school flu programme in Greater Manchester since 2017, as well as school immunisation services in many other areas such as Lancashire.”
Emma Brough, Chief Operating Officer at IntraHealth said,
“We are delighted that the months of preparation that has gone into setting up this new service has led to a successful start to the new expanded schools immunisation service which started this month.
We are grateful to our partners for the support they provided and we welcome over 50 new staff to IntraHealth to deliver the new service to schools across Greater Manchester. Five dedicated offices across the Greater Manchester area will support the delivery of the IVIS service to 570,000 children and young people across more than 1,200 schools.”
