WellCareTracker™ assesses the completeness and timeliness of routine preventive health services received by children. Enter the dates for immunizations and other health supervision services, e.g. vision and hearing screening, lead and anemia screening, etc., and WellCareTracker™ determines which immunizations and/or services are up-to-date, currently due, or overdue based on the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendations in its Guidelines for Health Supervision schedule of services. WellCareTracker™ will generate compliance reports for childcare programs on a group of children or a specific compliance report for an individual child.

NOTE: Although WellCareTracker™ was originally designed for Pennsylvania child care centers, it is also currently in use in Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Texas, and Utah.

"I have been working in a variety of roles in the early childhood field for many years. Although I have a master's degree in early childhood education, I try to be open to new ideas. My current job involves providing training and technical assistance to help Head Start grantees use a web-based record keeping system that many Head Start programs have in place. The information in these records is supposed to help staff provide support for children and families. Most of the time, people who use this system have little time left to use the information to work with families because it takes them so long to figure out what services children have received, what they need, and then enter all the due dates manually. Doing something with this information is especially important for infants and toddlers who usually need some services often during the program year. Now that we are using WellCareTracker™ our staff love how easily and accurately it does the work after just a few minutes to enter the dates of services the children have received. It is a wonderful tool. Our grantees are spending more of their time helping families get the services their children need." (See testimonials from other users.)

January, 2018 - WellCareTracker™ (WCT) remains alive and kicking! The assessment logic has been updated for the new oral health recommendations in the AAP's 2017 Periodicity Schedule. We welcome the continued use of WCT by students at Northampton Community College (NCC) taking the Child Care Health Advocate Course in addition to our regular child care center customers across the state of Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

January, 2010 - WellCareTracker™ Now Tracks H1N1 Influenza Vaccination

WellCareTracker™ has been updated to track H1N1 vaccinations, which is recommended for children from 6 months through 18 years of age, household contacts and caregivers for children younger than 6 months of age, healthcare and emergency medical services personnel, and pregnant women. For additional information, please see: http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/vaccination/acip.htm

August, 2008 - CDC Reviews Primary Changes and Updates in Influenza Vaccine Recommendations

      The 2008 recommendations include new and updated information. Principal updates and changes include 1) a new recommendation that annual vaccination be administered to all children aged 5--18 years, beginning in the 2008--09 influenza season, if feasible, but no later than the 2009--10 influenza season; 2) a recommendation that annual vaccination of all children aged 6 months through 4 years (59 months) continue to be a primary focus of vaccination efforts because these children are at higher risk for influenza complications compared with older children; 3) a new recommendation that either trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine or live, attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV) be used when vaccinating healthy persons aged 2 through 49 years (the previous recommendation was to administer LAIV to person aged 5--49 years); 4) a recommendation that vaccines containing the 2008--09 trivalent vaccine virus strains A/Brisbane/59/2007 (H1N1)-like, A/Brisbane/10/2007 (H3N2)-like, and B/Florida/4/2006-like antigens be used; and, 5) new information on antiviral resistance among influenza viruses in the United States. Persons for whom vaccination is recommended are listed in boxes 1 and 2. These recommendations also include a summary of safety data for U.S. licensed influenza vaccines. This report and other information are available at CDC's influenza website (http://www.cdc.gov/flu), including any updates or supplements to these recommendations that might be required during the 2008--09 influenza season. Vaccination and health-care providers should be alert to announcements of recommendation updates and should check the CDC influenza website periodically for additional information.

September, 2007 - Influenza Alert 2007

      Children aged <2 years are at increased risk for influenza-related hospitalizations, and those aged <5 years have more influenza-related health-care visits than older children. During the 2005-06 influenza season, the second season after the federal government recommended annual influenza vaccination for all children aged 6-23 months, coverage remained low and did not increase substantially from the 2004-05 seasons. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, only one in five children aged 6-23 months were fully vaccinated against influenza and slightly more than one in ten children needing two doses received both doses during the 2005-2006 season.

      Influenza vaccine is the single best way to protect children and their caregivers in group care from a severe winter illness. All healthy children aged 6 to 59 months, and the household contacts and out-of-home caregivers of children from birth to 5 years of age should be vaccinated against influenza annually. Two types of vaccines are available, a flu shot and a nasal-spray flu vaccine (FluMist). The nasal-spray flu vaccine can be used by children 2-17 years of age and adults (to age 49 years). FluMist should not be administered to anyone with asthma or to children under the age of 5 years with recurrent wheezing because of the potential for increased wheezing after receiving the vaccine. People who are allergic to any of FluMist's components, including eggs or egg products, should also not receive the vaccine.

      For more information about influenza, including links to fact sheets in many languages go to http://www.cdc.gov/flu/.

      Note - FREE Influenza Vaccine for Caregiving Staff will be available at the PACCA Conference October 11 and 12, provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Health (subject to vaccine availability and vaccine contraindications). Register at http://www.pacca.org.

March, 2006 - WellCareTracker™ was featured in a poster presented by Dr. Stuart Weinberg at the CDC's 40th National Immunization Conference, held Mar 6-9 in Atlanta, GA:

• WellCareTracker™ - Developing, Testing, and Implementing the Immunization Assessment Algorithm as a Web Service

October, 2005 - WellCareTracker™ was featured in a presentation made by Dr. Stuart Weinberg at the American Academy of Pediatric's 2005 National Conference and Exhibition, held Oct 8-12 in Washington, DC:

• Technology to Assist Your Clinical Decisions - WellCareTracker™

May, 2004 - WellCareTracker™ was featured in two presentations made by Dr. Jerold Aronson at the 2004 National Immunization Conference held May 11-14 in Nashville, TN:

• WellCareTracker™ - linking pre-school and child (day) care centers with medical homes - a technology-based "Push" strategy to improve immunization completeness

• Children's Village Child Care - Using Technology to Improve Immunization Completeness in an Asian-American Community

October, 2002 - WellCareTracker™ is presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference and Exhibition in Boston.

August, 2002 - ECELSTRAK renamed to WellCareTracker™. ECELSTRAK originally took its name from ECELS, a program of the American Academy of Pediatrics, PA Chapter.

July, 2002 - Live use of web-based ECELSTRAK is initiated to process compliance reports for statewide child care centers in Pennsylvania.

March, 2002 - The web-based version of ECELSTRAK is launched.

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For the period 2003-05, dissemination of WellCareTracker for use by early education providers was supported, in part, by HRSA/MCHB