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THURSDAY, Sept. 19, 2024 -- Among military children, there has been an improvement in vaccine completion and timeliness, but the risk for noncompletion is higher among children born to younger parents and those with a well-child care location change, according to a study published online Sept. 19 in Pediatrics . Celeste J. Romano, from the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego, and colleagues identified children born at military hospitals from 2010 through 2019 and examined vaccine completion and timeliness for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis; polio; measles, mumps, and rubella; hepatitis B; Haemophilus influenzae type b; varicella; and pneumococcal conjugate individually and as a combined seven-vaccine series through 24 months. The researchers found that 74.4 percent of 275,967 children completed the combined seven-vaccine series; delays occurred in 36.2 percent of those who completed the series. Among children born in 2016 and 2017, completion peaked at 78.7 percent. Completion was lowest for rotavirus (77.5 percent); diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (83.1 percent); Haemophilus influenzae type b (86.6 percent); and pneumococcal conjugate (88.4 percent). Children born to younger parents had a higher risk for noncompletion (adjusted risk ratio, 1.33), as did children with a well-child care location change (adjusted risk ratio, 1.10). Parallel risk was seen for delays and noncompletion. "Identified patterns in undervaccination indicate continued challenges to immunization services delivery," the authors write. "Further work is needed to address these barriers to vaccination and improve access to care."

The first episode to follow the CDC Foundation's new format for its “Contagious Conversations” podcast went live Aug. 28. It dives into the economic effects of disease, homing in on the response to a recent measles outbreak in Chicago for a real-world example to illustrate the concept. Five years and nearly 50 episodes in, the CDC Foundation has given its “Contagious Conversations” podcast a makeover.The organization, a nonprofit charity established by Congress to mobilize philanthropic resources to support the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced this week that the audio show will take on a new format as it begins its next season.The podcast, which is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and its own website, began in early 2019. The 47 episodes released roughly once a month since then have largely followed the same structure, centering around a Q&A interview between host Claire Stinson, the foundation’s communications officer, and an expert on a particular topic. Past episode subjects have included the ongoing mpox epidemic, health disparities facing Black women and the opioid crisis, among many others.Moving forward, however, “Contagious Conversations” episodes will sound a bit different. Rather than a simple back-and-forth conversation, they’ll follow more of a narrative story arc, with multiple experts weighing in and adding more context to the public health issue at the core of each segment. According to the foundation, the additional voices and context will help “paint a broader picture for listeners.” The first episode to follow the new format went live on Wednesday. “The Costs of Getting Sick” dives into the economic effects of disease, looking broadly at how the CDC and other public health leaders’ work to prevent illness also saves money—and homing in on the response to a recent measles outbreak in Chicago for a real-world example that further illustrates the concept.Throughout the episode, Stinson talks to Alexander Sloboda, M.D., medical director of immunization and emergency preparedness programs for the Chicago Department of Public Health, and to Dan Filardo, M.D., medical officer on the CDC’s measles, rubella and cytomegalovirus epidemiology team, about the progression of the outbreak and the fast-moving public health response. From there, she brings in Michael Osterholm, Ph.D., director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, to speak further about how disease preparedness can prevent economic disaster.Stinson closes out the episode by noting, “You may have noticed we’ve expanded the way we do things on today’s show beyond the single interview format. We plan to keep doing that.”To keep up the more multifaceted approach to its series, the foundation said in the announcement that episodes will come out quarterly, rather than the previous monthly-ish schedule, giving the team more time to put together the newly narrative-rich segments.“Through this new approach to our Contagious Conversations podcast, we’re also working to illuminate stories that convey the lifesaving work of public health that take place around us every day, helping to keep us all safe and providing us, our friends and our families with the information we need to make decisions about our health,” Pierce Nelson, the foundation’s chief communications officer, said in a statement. “Public health is about protecting us all—everyone, in every community, in every part of our nation and world.”

FRIDAY, Aug. 9, 2024 -- In findings that offer compelling evidence of the power of childhood vaccines, a new government report shows the routine shots have prevented hundreds of millions of illnesses, tens of millions of hospitalizations and more than 1 million deaths among Americans born in the past 30 years. The new data , published Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, analyzed the benefits of the CDC’s Vaccines for Children Program, which was launched in 1994 to make childhood immunizations more affordable and accessible. The results of the research are a “testament to the success” of vaccinations for preventing diseases, Dr. Sara Siddiqui , a pediatrician at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone in New York, told CNN . “These are vaccinations that are currently recommended in the childhood vaccination series and also are provided at reduced cost as part of the Vaccines For Children Program. I am very pleased and grateful to see this study being performed to report the health benefits of vaccinations as a way to prevent disease,” Siddiqui added. “My job as a pediatrician is to keep children healthy and out of the hospital. Vaccinations are a way to keep children healthy and prevent severity of disease,” she added. “I encourage all parents to continually have a conversation and discussion with their pediatrician about each vaccine that their child is due for as well as the specific disease that it would help in preventing.” In the new CDC study, researchers from the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases quantified the health benefits and economic impact of routine immunizations among children in the United States born since 1994. Nine vaccines were included in the analysis: diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP); Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib); poliovirus; measles, mumps and rubella; hepatitis B; varicella; hepatitis A; pneumococcal conjugate and rotavirus. Some other common vaccines, including flu, COVID-19 and RSV immunizations, were not included in the analysis. What did they discover? Among about 117 million children born from 1994 through 2023, routine vaccinations will have prevented some 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations and just over 1 million deaths. The number of illnesses prevented in the study ranged from about 5,000 cases for tetanus to around 100 million cases for measles and varicella. The greatest estimated cumulative number of hospitalizations and deaths prevented was about 13.2 million hospitalizations for measles and about 752,800 deaths for diphtheria, the researchers wrote. Their analysis also revealed that routine childhood vaccinations yielded a net savings of $540 billion in direct costs, such as the costs of treating an infection, and $2.7 trillion in societal costs, such as parents missing work to care for a sick child. The Vaccines for Children (VFC) program was created to provide vaccines at no cost to eligible people 18 and younger. Last year, more than half -- about 54% -- of children were eligible to receive vaccines through the program, the report found. “VFC plays an important role in maintaining high childhood vaccination coverage by reducing barriers to access, especially in geographic areas and among populations that have historically had lower vaccination coverage, such as children living in rural areas,” the researchers, led by Fangjun Zhou , wrote in their report. “Immunization programs might consider expanding their provider network by using nontraditional vaccine providers such as pharmacies in areas where access is deemed to be inadequate,” they added. “Further, provider reminders, provider assessment and feedback, and client reminder-recall systems remain important methods to reduce missed opportunities for vaccination.” During the pandemic, routine childhood vaccination coverage dropped in the United States because of reduced access to primary health care and the spread of misinformation, prompting vaccine hesitancy. But the United States wasn't the only country to experience backslides in vaccination rates during the pandemic: Data released in July by the World Health Organization and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) showed the world has yet to recover. For instance, worldwide coverage of the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3) vaccine was 84% in 2023, the same as in 2022 but below the 86% recorded in 2019. Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.