How to transfer our child's vaccination records to the US?

[Bill Hamze 89]

I tried searching here on how to bring our USC child's vaccination records to the U.S. and making them official for admission into schools there, but I couldn't find anything. 

 

Background:

 

- I'm a USC and my wife is a new LPR. She already got her IR1 visa stamped into her passport.

- We're scheduled to arrive in the U.S. in a week. 

- We have a daughter together. Filed a CRBA and thus she is a USC. 

- We did her vaccinations here in Vietnam and have a nice record of every shot. Has all the names of vaccines, injection dates, doctor stamps, etc.

- We followed her vaccination schedule most closely to the one recommended by WHO.

 

We're going to take her vaccination record with us, but how do we make it official in the U.S.?

 

Will the Vietnamese records itself suffice? 

 

Or do we take them to a new pediatrician and explain that we need to make the record official and recognized by the U.S. school systems? 

 

Could we somehow find a blank yellow card and write the vaccinations in ourselves, and have a doctor review it, then sign / stamp it?

 

I'm sure we're not the first ones to go through this, so I'd love to understand how this process is usually done. 

[TBoneTX 45,288]

1 hour ago, Bill Hamze said:

Will the Vietnamese records itself suffice?

They might, especially if you get a certified translation into English.  See below.

1 hour ago, Bill Hamze said:

do we take them to a new pediatrician and explain that we need to make the record official and recognized by the U.S. school systems?

Maybe a pediatrician can transcribe them somehow, but most (for liability purposes) might insist on running titer tests.  See below.

 

Why don't you contact the administration of the school district where you plan to move, and ask?  There's no uniform policy.  Avoid overthinking.

[Bill Hamze 89]

2 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

They might, especially if you get a certified translation into English.  See below.

Maybe a pediatrician can transcribe them somehow, but most (for liability purposes) might insist on running titer tests.  See below.

 

Why don't you contact the administration of the school district where you plan to move, and ask?  There's no uniform policy.  Avoid overthinking.

Yeah, wouldn’t hurt us to email the district and ask. Thanks. I’m sure they have a process since it’s pretty diverse there with lots of immigrants.
 

Re translation, probably no need since it’s all just names of vaccines, dates, and stamps. Not much to translate if anything. 

[craig5977 58]

We just used our sons records from Vietnam and gave them to the doctor here when he had a physical for Kindegarten in USA. We also showed the school nurse as well. Was no problem at all since as you stated many schools are culturally diverse now. Good luck

[Bill Hamze 89]

42 minutes ago, craig5977 said:

We just used our sons records from Vietnam and gave them to the doctor here when he had a physical for Kindegarten in USA. We also showed the school nurse as well. Was no problem at all since as you stated many schools are culturally diverse now. Good luck

Awesome, that’s great to know. Thanks!

[top_secret 2,421]

It would probably be different from state to state and probably even from school district to school district, but for us in California the school accepted original hand filled "baby book" from the Philippines along with the records generated during the immigration physical.   They were not overly fussy about the format or any sort of "officialness". just if their was a record that the immunizations took place.  Later during a routine physical at a Kaiser Permanente clinic, the nurse there very carefully went through any and all records of vaccinations and imputed them all in the the California State Immunization database so their now exist a computer record of all vaccinations.

[Bill Hamze 89]

@top_secret Funny that you should mention Kaiser. I was looking at Kaiser health insurance plans for where we will live. It would be nice if we got a nurse willing to go through my daughters vax records and enter them into a database to make things easier for future enrollments.

[top_secret 2,421]

12 hours ago, Bill Hamze said:

@top_secret Funny that you should mention Kaiser. I was looking at Kaiser health insurance plans for where we will live. It would be nice if we got a nurse willing to go through my daughters vax records and enter them into a database to make things easier for future enrollments.

  

With Kaiser it appeared that updating and computerizing any and all vaccination records was a front and center number one priority action item for new enrollees.   They proactively did the same with both my stepdaughter and wife at their first visits for any reason.  Now all the vaccinations are entered in the State of California database and we can just download a fancy pdf with the official state seal and all, which is quite convenient. 

[Ontarkie 14,221]

We had no problems with the school or the doctors taking our yellow vaccine books and put it into their records.