White House Author

Creating awareness of the importance of childhood immunizations and taking action to insure that all children are fully immunized, Harriett Schloer of the Rotary Club of Bend High Desert in Bend, Oregon founded the Rotary Shots for Tots program in 1999 for the children of Deschutes County, Oregon. Since then, the program has immunized more than 16,000 children with no cost to their families. In developing the program which has become a Rotary model for developing community partnerships, Schloer, the program’s Executive Director, organized seven Rotary clubs and their 400+ members as part of a county immunization coalition that includes Rotary, the Deschutes County Health Department, McDonald’s restaurants, Vaccines for Children, and many others in the public and private sector to insure the program’s success. Shots for Tots free clinics are held in four communities during the year and are fully staffed with Rotary, health department and community volunteers. In addition, Schloer has served as Rotary District 5110’s Domestic Immunization Chair since 2000 as well as the PolioPlus Chair since 2009 raising more than $485,000 for polio eradication through Pennies for Polio and other club and community programs. In 2012 she launched the PolioPlus Society in the district to encourage all Rotarians to commit to supporting PolioPlus until global eradication has been certified.