Childhood Immunization as a Tool to Address Health Disparities

One of the challenges for public health in the 21st is reducing and ultimately eliminating health disparities, domestically and globally. Infectious diseases in childhood can lead to complications, disability, and death. Protecting all children from vaccine-preventable diseases is a public health mandate, requiring the elimination of disparities that put some children at higher risk. Childhood immunization is a proven public health intervention that protects our nation and our children.

This session of Grand Rounds explored ways that immunization efforts have served to reduce disparities in childhood infectious diseases, demonstrating an effective and cost-effective tool for advancing health equity. Vaccines protect both the people who receive them and those with whom they come in contact. Vaccines are responsible for the control of many infectious diseases that were once common in the United States and around the world. Vaccine-preventable diseases have a costly impact, resulting from doctor’s visits, hospitalizations, and premature deaths.

Viewers learned about how immunization programs have positively affected children’s health, as experts explored public health, clinical, and policy implications of vaccinating children.