Company Chemists’ Association
Community pharmacies should be mobilised as part of efforts to increase declining UK vaccination uptake rates, according to a report by the Company Chemists’ Association on behalf of the Pharmacy Vaccinations Development Group.
The ‘Increasing vaccination uptake through community pharmacy‘ report, launched at an event in the House of Commons on 25 February 2025, makes a case for the greater role for pharmacies across vaccination programmes.
In the report, the Pharmacy Vaccinations Development Group — a coalition of organisations spanning the vaccines supply chain — acknowledges that significant variation in vaccine uptake nationwide can be explained by “poor access to healthcare” and “insufficient capacity in the healthcare system”, among other factors.
It noted that pharmacy is already instrumental to vaccine provision. The profession has delivered over a quarter of all COVID-19 vaccines, provided flu vaccinations for the NHS and offered locally commissioned services for respiratory syncytial virus, measles, mumps and rubella.
However, the report argues that it is time for this role to expand, with community pharmacists able to offer “vital accessibility” to drive uptake, improve patients’ confidence and prevent ill health more widely.
Specifically, the group is calling for seven “key enablers”, including commissioning pharmacies to administer all the vaccines that older adults are eligible for and expand existing pilots and early adopters.
The report also cites how most residents of England live within a 20-minute walk of a pharmacy, many of those pharmacies are open during evenings and weekends.
“In addition, there are more pharmacies in the more deprived communities, people that often have the greatest healthcare needs,” the report said, adding that factors such as deprivation, rurality and cultural background are “key determinants of vaccine uptake”.
The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) is one of the members of the Pharmacy Vaccinations Development Group behind the report. Commenting on the report, Olivier Picard, vice-chair of the NPA, said: “We very much back the idea of expanding the administration of vaccines in community pharmacies, which have a strong track record of success in prevention and public health.
“Our sector’s unmatched level of access and convenience makes this an obvious area for growth, which clearly fits the aspirations of the NHS ten-year plan. We, therefore, are pleased to support the development of this new report, which is both practical in its outlook and firmly evidence-based.”
It is not the first time community pharmacy has been said to require a greater contribution to vaccine delivery. In its December 2023 strategy, NHS England said it aimed to prioritise “convenient local places”, with “targeted outreach to support uptake in underserved populations”.
It also pledged to improve online access and joined-up approaches, offering multiple vaccinations to the whole family, where appropriate.
