Top 10 Reasons to Protect Children Through Vaccination
- Parents want to do everything possible to make sure their children are healthy and protected from preventable diseases. Vaccination is the best way to do that.
- Vaccination protects children from serious illness and complications of vaccine-preventable diseases, which can include amputation of an arm or leg, hospitalization, pneumonia, hearing loss, convulsions, brain damage, and death.
- Vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, whooping cough, COVID-19, and influenza are still a threat. They continue to infect U.S. children, resulting in hospitalizations and deaths.
- Though vaccination has led to a dramatic decline in the number of U.S. cases of several infectious diseases, some, such as measles, are quite common in other countries and are brought to the United States by international travelers. If children are not vaccinated, they could easily get one of these diseases from a traveler or while traveling themselves.
- Outbreaks of preventable diseases occur when many parents decide not to vaccinate their children.
- Vaccination is safe and effective. All vaccines undergo long and careful reviews by scientists, doctors, and the federal government to make sure they are safe.
- Organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American College of Nurse-Midwives, the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Physician Associates, the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all strongly support protecting children with recommended vaccinations.
- Vaccination protects others you care about, including family members, friends, and grandparents.
- If children aren’t vaccinated, they can spread disease to other children who are too young to be vaccinated or to people with weakened immune systems, such as transplant recipients and people with cancer. This could result in long-term complications and even death for these vulnerable people.
- We all have a public health commitment to our communities to protect each other and each other’s children by vaccinating our own family members.
Source: Immunize.org, Top Ten Reasons to Protect Your Child by Vaccinating
RESOURCES
Vaccines Work!
CDC data shows a dramatic decline in vaccine-preventable diseases compared to the pre-vaccine era.
What if You Don’t Vaccinate Your Child?
Learn the consequences of not immunizing your child.
Adult Immunization: Importance of Staying Up to Date with Vaccines
The top 10 reasons to stay up to date on vaccines.
Partner Resources
From CDC, on-time vaccination throughout childhood is essential because it helps provide immunity before children are exposed to potentially life-threatening diseases. Also, find information on the safety of vaccines and how they’re tested.
Vaccine-preventable disease information, what it does, year vaccine available, and why immunize for it, from healthychildren.org, a program of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Vaccines are intended to prepare your immune system to fight off infections and prevent disease. But do you know how they do it exactly? From History of Vaccines, a project by The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
Herd immunity—when a proportion of a population becomes immune (either through disease or vaccination), the disease is not able to trigger new epidemics—and how it works. From History of Vaccines, a project by The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
Voices for Vaccines is an advocacy organization with credible vaccine information to empower families, promote confidence, and restore trust in the science behind vaccines.
People share their stories of vaccine-preventable diseases online, from the California Immunization Coalition.
PERSONAL TESTIMONIES Christine Roberts
A personal story from Christine Roberts, the parent of a child chronically infected with hepatitis B.
Read more.David Keller
A personal story from David Keller, a physician and former chief of the Infectious Disease Epidemiology Program with the New Mexico Department of Health.
Read more.
Why Vaccines Work
As more and more parents choose not to vaccinate their children or are vaccinating them later, diseases like measles are making a comeback. Are vaccines safe? How do vaccines work? Why do some people claim there is a link between vaccines and autism? This video looks at the history and science of vaccines and why people are afraid of something that has saved so many lives.