Increasing COVID-19 Immunization Rates through a Vaccination Program for Hospitalized Children.

Introduction: Inpatient coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination initiatives offer a novel strategy to eliminate barriers to care, provide access to interprofessional teams, and decrease COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Our inpatient vaccination initiative aimed to triple the baseline rate of eligible hospitalized children vaccinated against COVID-19 from 0.95% to 2.85% from December 2021 to June 2022. Methods: We implemented a COVID-19 vaccination program for pediatric inpatients eligible to receive a dose based on age, current guidelines, and prior doses received. Key drivers included immunization counseling training, identification of eligible patients, and a streamlined workflow. The outcome measure was the percentage of eligible patients who received a vaccine dose during hospitalization. The process measures included the percentage of age-eligible patients who were appropriately screened for prior doses on admission. We designed a clinical decision support system to enhance eligibility identification. The team performed a health equity analysis which stratified patients by social vulnerability index. Results: During the study period, the average percentage of eligible hospitalized patients vaccinated increased from 0.9% to 3.5%, representing special cause variation and a centerline shift. The average percentage of age-eligible patients screened for prior vaccine doses on admission increased from 66.5% to 81.5%. Patients were more likely to be vaccinated if their clinician was exposed to the clinical decision support system (P < 0.01). The social vulnerability index analysis showed no significant differences. Conclusions: This COVID-19 vaccination initiative highlights how an interprofessional approach can increase vaccination rates in hospitalized children; however, overall inpatient COVID-19 vaccination rates in this setting remained low.

Ga-doped Ca12Al14O33 mayenite oxide ion conductors: synthesis, defects, and electrical properties.

Although mayenite Ca12Al14O33 has been known as an oxygen ion conductor for several decades, its relatively low oxide ion conductivity limits its applications in electrochemical devices. Thus, many efforts have been made by researchers, employing a doping strategy, in order to further improve its ionic conductivity, but with little success. In this work, a series of pure phase Ca12Al14-x Ga x O33+δ (0 ≤ x ≤ 1.2) materials were synthesized by a traditional solid state reaction method. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) combined with energy dispersion spectrum (EDS) analyses disclosed well-sintered ceramics with uniform Ga distributions. The defect formation energies for Ga replacing the two distinguishable Al1 and Al2 sites in Ca12Al14O33 calculated by static lattice atomistic simulation are nearly identical, ∼3.03 and ∼3.04 eV, respectively, consistent with the results of Rietveld refinements based on the XRD data, from which no preferred distribution of Ga on Al1 or Al2 site was observed. The electrical properties investigated by alternating current (AC) impedance spectroscopy show increased bulk conductivities for 0 ≤ x ≤ 0.4. Thus, here we present the first work that successfully improves the bulk oxide ion conductivity of Ca12Al14O33 by Ga-doping.