Vaccine-Preventable Disease: The Forgotten Story

Background:
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of vaccines, parents are often persuaded by powerful, emotionally charged messages from anti-vaccine groups. Sensationalist media reports and heartbreaking stories of a child affected by autism strike a chord with parents and create doubt and hesitation. Furthermore, anti-vaccine groups minimize the severity of vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs). In order to communicate effectively with parents and combat the anti-vaccine message, public health professionals must frame the message in terms of VPDs and the morbidity or death that can result. To this end, we developed a parent education booklet that communicates the severity of VPDs through compelling personal stories of persons or families affected by VPDs.

Setting:
Homes, clinics, and offices of persons affected by VPDs.

Population:
Persons or families affected by VPDs.

Project Description:
Persons or families were identified by word of mouth, support groups, and physician referrals. Staff at Texas Children's Hospital contacted, interviewed, and professionally photographed persons and families affected by VPDs. All vaccines included are recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The interviews and photographs were assembled into a booklet.

Results/Lessons Learned:
We developed the educational booklet for distribution to parents and healthcare providers. We would like to provide a free copy to all attendees at the National Immunization Conference. We provide a personal story and photograph for each person or family affected by each of the following VPDs: measles, influenza, rotavirus, polio, HPV, pertussis, Hib meningitis, meningococcal meningitis, pneumococcal meningitis, rubella, and varicella. To date, families from the following states have participated: Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and Wyoming. Recurrent themes among participants included an emphasis on the severity of VPDs, the misperceptions about vaccines, and the benefit of vaccines as a preventative measure. Several families contacted were reluctant to be interviewed or photographed for fear of potential repercussions. Sample pages are available upon request.