With Winter Break right around the corner, Pat Walker Health Center would like to remind our students, faculty and staff that the U of A is participating in the 2023-2024 Flu and COVID-19 Vaccination Challenge that ends on Friday, Dec. 15. 

The challenge is against other colleges and universities across the state of Arkansas to see which institution will get the most undergraduate students to self-report in an Arkansas Immunization Action Coalition (ImmunizeAR) survey. In the latest leaderboard report (Week 10) that ImmunizeAR shared with the colleges in the competition, the U of A Fayetteville was No. 2 for COVID-19 vaccine self-reports, right behind U of A Community College at Batesville, who has previously won both the flu and COVID-19 vaccination challenge awards.  

The overall challenge is open to undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty and staff. However, the institutions enrolled in the challenge will be judged on the percentage of their undergraduate student population who self-report their vaccines in the survey. The university with the highest percentage of undergraduates vaccinated with the most flu and COVID-19 vaccines, will be announced as the winner(s) and receive trophies in February 2024. Last academic year, the U of A won the Innovation Award for the challenge, which you can read more about in this Arkansas News article. 

You must be a U of A student, faculty or staff member to fill out the survey, and you could have received the flu vaccine or the COVID-19 vaccine from wherever to complete the survey. No identifiable information is collected, but it is important that you select "UofA University of Arkansas Fayetteville" as your college/university in the survey. 

Be sure to follow the Pat Walker Health Center on Instagram and Facebook @uofahealth to keep up with the challenge and stay up to date when winners are announced in February 2024.