Measles

• Rite Aid (NYSE: RAD) will offer Back to School Family Immunization Days at select stores, including Bartell Drugs in the Pacific Northwest, providing families convenient opportunities to walk in and get the vaccinations they need to protect themselves against measles, whooping cough, COVID-19, and other diseases.
• Rite Aid Family Immunization Days are walk-in clinics available to families providing convenient opportunities for them to get vaccinated on the weekends.
• Rite Aid Family Immunization Day will take place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, July 15.
• Those who aren’t able to attend a Family Immunization Day can walk in or schedule an appointment for necessary vaccinations at their local Rite Aid today via the online scheduling tool .

• One of these is Hartford College in Sydney, a new Catholic school with an emphasis on the liberal arts, including classical literature, languages and philosophy.
• But there is a long tradition of parents and local communities starting their own schools if they feel what’s on offer is not suiting their families’ needs.

Ragged schools

• Before compulsory schooling, Ragged schools appeared in Melbourne as early as 1859.
• In the 20th century, parents of children with a disability, established schools to meet the specific needs of their children.

The community schools movement

• Coalitions of parents and teachers set up community schools as alternatives to a narrow, paternalistic, exclusionary education.
• This was influenced by American education philosopher John Dewey’s ideas about democratic schools and the freedom given to students in Scottish educator A.S. Neill’s Summerhill school.
• By the end of the century, community schools had either disappeared or had evolved into places for students who were not progressing in mainstream schools.

Low-fee, faith-based schools

• After a 1981 High Court decision, the federal government began to fund a wider range of schools, including religious schools.
• Rules that limited the establishment of new schools were also scrapped, further opening up new parent and community-initiated schools.

New, specialist schools

• But there are also new schools for students with high academic potential, bush schools, sports schools, performing arts and music schools, science-based schools and sustainable schools.
• Read more:
  20% of Australian students don't finish high school: non-mainstream schools have a lot to teach us about helping kids stay

How do parents create a new school?

• For the last four years, we have been researching the development of a new Adelaide school, Ngutu College.
• It was established by former state school principal and Kamilaroi Man, Andrew Plastow, in response to teacher and community concern.
• It describes itself as having:
  Aboriginal cultures as its soul, children as its heart and the arts as it spine.

What does this mean for the mainstream system?

• The strength of public education is the interaction between children, young people and their wider community.
• The more separate, specialised schools that are set up, the more the public loses these students, parents and communities.

• Community health and social determinants of health : Conduent’s Healthy Communities Institute (HCI) delivers an end-to-end solution linking health and social determinants of health data with innovative technology and domain expertise.
• The platform gives stakeholders a centralized dashboard of more than 150 health, social and economic indicators, high-value analytics and evidence-based practices to address community health priorities.
• “Public and community health challenges are complex and have wide-reaching implications, so we must remain ever vigilant.
• Visit Conduent Government Health to learn more about the leading solutions and expert teams that are helping the company’s public health clients, and the millions of people who count on them.

• A year later, we knew getting a third dose was important for protection against the new Omicron variant.
• Read more:
  Over half of eligible aged care residents are yet to receive their COVID booster.

Why do vaccines need boosters?

• Vaccines work by training our body’s immune system to react harder, faster, stronger and better when we get infected by a pathogenic virus or bacteria.
• Unfortunately, this protective benefit is not permanent and immunity tends to “wane” over time.
• Second, pathogens circulating in the community can mutate, which enables “escape” from being recognised by the immune system.

Some vaccines need frequent boosting, others last forever

• For viruses that change little (such as measles), your childhood vaccines remain highly protective and you might never need a booster.
• In contrast, some viruses can rapidly and dramatically change (looking at you, influenza), quickly rendering our vaccines outdated and making updates necessary.

So, where does COVID fit in?

• SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, has demonstrated an ability to rapidly change since emerging in 2019.
• Although the early pandemic in Australia featured vaccine supply constraints, we now lucky to have many different vaccine options.

That’s great, but I recently had COVID, so …

• Queuing for a PCR test seems like a fever dream from the past.
• If you did have confirmed COVID, our research shows the majority of people mount a strong immune response following each infection.

Well, I definitely had something. What does that mean for my COVID booster?

• Firstly, there is no such thing as “too much” immunity.
• Beyond the regular side-effects of a vaccine, there are no known additional risks to being re-vaccinated soon after an infection.

How should we balance booster shots and infections in the community?

• Our communities now have high immunity (from both vaccines and infections), so balancing the risks and rewards of COVID boosters is increasingly complex.
• While we still need more data, multiple studies suggest booster vaccines can reduce the risk of developing long COVID, providing another reason to keep up-to-date.

The bottom line

• Unfortunately, COVID is among us and likely here for good.
• Adam Wheatley receives funding from NHMRC, MRFF and ARC.