Vaccination remains one of the most important ways to protect older people living in residential aged care.
WA Primary Health Alliance plays a key role in supporting WA residential aged care homes and primary health providers who deliver in-reach services with immunisation preparedness and response.
The 2025 new aged care reform places greater emphasis on immunisation across all vaccine preventable diseases.
WA Primary Health Alliance (WAPHA) is supporting residential aged care homes, GPs and pharmacists to strengthen vaccination planning, coordination and reporting. Residential aged care providers play an important role in ensuring vaccines are available to all residents.
Through the Residential Aged Care Home (RACH) Immunisation Support Program, WAPHA supports homes to:
- Plan, coordinate and deliver onsite vaccinations safely.
- Reduce administrative burden for residential aged care homes.
- Support in-house immunisation services and improve resident vaccination uptake.
- Track each resident’s immunisation status using the resident vaccination tracker.
- Assist facilities to access the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR).
- Promote appropriate cold chain management practices.
Additional resources are also available to support residential aged care homes, including access to the South Australian immunisation course at no cost ‘Understanding Vaccines and the National Immunisation Program’ for RACH nurses.
If you would like more information on this, please contact us at immunisation@wapha.org.au
In addition, WAPHA has a role in:
- Facilitating communication between RACHs, vaccination providers, GPs, hospitals and other local health providers, regarding vaccination delivery in aged care
- Engaging with local aged care stakeholders, providing insight to local and regional vaccination planning and delivery of immunisations to our at-risk populations.
Immunisation Consent Form
WAPHA has created an immunisation consent form guide for aged care homes and service providers to use to assist in the creation of their own unique valid consent form. We have included the relevant information that a facility would need to collect and give to form part of a valid consent.