Vaccination and Immunization

To address the different fears motivating vaccine-hesitant parents versus antivaccine parents, one must understand the historical resistance to vaccination.

As state policies regarding vaccination for children entering kindergarten eliminate exemptions for personal beliefs, parents turn to claiming exemptions on religious grounds.

The anti-vaccination movement has led to large pockets of the country that are unvaccinated and vulnerable to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, but large-scale education could undo the damage.

The evidence is clear: Practitioners who fail to administer immunizations according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices schedules results in adverse outcomes for children and adolescents who are needlessly exposed to vaccine preventable diseases.

The 13-valent pneumococcal vaccine (PCV13) is performing well since its 2010 introduction but still has some flaws, according to a recent report.

Clinicians must advocate for pediatric patients receiving immunomodulation therapies to also receive timely vaccinations for vaccine-preventable diseases.

New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveal how well influenza vaccine works in reducing hospitalization rates for serious disease among children.

The number of completely unvaccinated children may not be large, but they pose a challenge to the pediatric practice. A recent C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health asked a sample of parents how their child’s primary care office deals with children who are completely unvaccinated and how they believe primary care offices should tackle the issue.

Preterm infants may face an increased risk for infections that are vaccine-preventable along with associated complications. A recent study indicates that preterm infants may also be at risk of not being vaccinated in a timely manner.

A noticeable gender gap exists between boys and girls when it comes to vaccination rates for human papillomavirus (HPV). Here’s why healthcare providers need to up their game when it comes to HPV vaccine for boys.

August is National Immunization Awareness Month, and the annual observance promotes the benefits of on-time vaccination for patients of all ages. Here are free materials to help you spread the word.

The rotavirus vaccine is working, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concludes in a new report, but there is still room for improved vaccine coverage.

Pediatricians spend precious time talking with parents whether they’re vaccine hesitant or vaccine opposed. Yet the time pediatricians spend trying to understand and educate families who are hesitant or against vaccinating their children is important and can be effective, according to Tina Q. Tan, MD.

Mark R. Schleiss, MD, discusses the differences between parents who are vaccine hesitant and those that are outright vaccine refusers. One can be reached and the other cannot.

Most humans are not moved by data. So, when John V. Williams, MD, talks with vaccine-hesitant or opposed parents, he’ll often talk about what he has seen as a pediatrician and done as a parent.

To me, it seems that we are trapped traveling around the world within ‘non-connected circles’ that encompass viewpoints adversely affecting significant scientific immunization advances developed to improve the health and well-being of infants, children, adolescents, their families, and all individuals who interact with them.

Contemporary Pediatrics asked pediatric infectious diseases experts how community pediatricians can talk with families who are firmly against vaccinating their children or hesitant to do so. Here’s what they said.

A new study from researchers at Columbia University indicate that the solution to increasing influenza immuinzation rates may be simple.

The later teenaged years are a time of missed opportunities for preventive care and vaccination, according to a new report focused on low rates of meningococcal booster vaccination.

More providers have been recommending human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination to their adolescent male patients in recent years, and the effort seems to be paying off: HPV vaccination coverage among boys aged 13 to 17 years increased from 8.3% in 2011 to 57.3% in 2016, while the proportion of providers who recommended the vaccination to this patient group increased from 14.2% to 65.5%.

Watching a short training video that addresses provider related barriers to vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV) corrects common misperceptions about HPV and the vaccine, increases providers’ comfort in counseling vaccine-hesitant parents, and facilitates vaccine completion.

Overall vaccination rates in children are good, but there is a small pocket of children who are completely unvaccinated, and this number is rising.

There are constructive ways to carry on difficult conversations with parents about immunization refusal or vaccine hesitancy.

Whereas infants don’t typically receive direct pertussis vaccination until at least age 2 months, a new study suggests that birth doses of the vaccine may be both safe and effective when mothers aren’t able to receive the vaccine themselves and pass antibodies to their babies.