Building Coalitions Across Texas (BCAT)
Coalitions are instrumental in promoting and increasing immunization rates, which helps keep all of Texas protected from outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. The Immunization Partnership’s (TIP) Building Coalitions Across Texas (BCAT) project fosters the incubation, growth, and development of coalitions to improve immunization policies and services at local and statewide levels.
The BCAT Network is an online community for Texas immunization coalitions to network and share coalition resources from TIP, Texas Department of State Health Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Coalition Works, and many others.
Immunization coalitions have the opportunity to learn from other members through discussion board posts and shared resources. Additionally, each coalition has their own page within the BCAT Network to interact with their members.
TIP’s coalition capacity building efforts include:
- Conducting strategic planning workshops for the Vaccine Awareness Coalition in Gregg County and Andrews County Immunization Coalition in Andrews County to help each coalition establish an action plan with goals and objectives.
- Helped write a communication plan for the Immunization Coalition of Greater Houston and assisted them with their first Legislative Luncheon.
- Helped the El Paso Immunization Coalition conduct their first Immunization Conference.
- Collaborated with six immunization coalitions across the state to provide a SWOT analysis assessment, coalition-capacity workshops and webinars, and updated toolkits.
- Distributed the Event Planning Guide which assists new and emerging immunization coalitions in building their capacity to improve and sustain high immunization rates through hosting community events.