BACKGROUND:
CDC receives inquiries from the public and from health care providers seeking vaccine safety surveillance data and/or clinical guidance. CDC’s Immunization Safety Branch (ISB) staff seek to remain aware of and responsive to public concerns over the safety of immunizations.

OBJECTIVE:
To describe characteristics of queries received by ISB and to identify key resources available to answer requests.

METHOD:
In May of 2002, ISB staff began documenting all inquiries received in an Inquiry Tracking System using Microsoft Access software. The tracking system includes information on the subject matter, requestor, route of contact and resources used.

RESULT:
From May of 2002 to December of 2003, 213 requests were answered by ISB staff. Vaccines most frequently asked about were influenza (19%) hepatitis B (11%), DTaP (9%), and MMR (8%). Most requests were from health care providers (35%), the general lay public (22%), CDC staff (18%), and the Department of Defense (10%). The main topics of the inquiries were: neurological adverse events (19%), injection site reactions (8%), and requests for data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) (8%). Inquiries came to ISB primarily from emails to CDC staff (44%), NIPINFO (CDC’s email service for vaccine inquiries) (21%) and phone calls to CDC (17%). ISB staff relied on results of published studies and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommendations, supplemented by searches of the VAERS database. ISB’s Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment team (CISA) also served as a resource for clinical vaccine safety questions.

CONCLUSION:
Inquiries that come to ISB help to identify gaps in the knowledge base on vaccine safety issues and may be useful in identifying new “signals” of safety concerns.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
To identify the types of questions asked and resources used to answer inquiries on vaccine safety received by ISB.