New! Vaccinate Your Baby Web Site

Every Child by Two has launched a Web site that is a central resource of vaccine information for parents and others who want to get the facts about vaccines.

The Vaccinate Your Baby Web site – located at www.vaccinateyourbaby.org – features a video welcome message from the campaign spokesperson and new mother, actress Amanda Peet, links to the latest research and studies about vaccines, an interactive timeline that illustrates the benefits vaccines have provided over the years, information about vaccine safety and ingredients, and the importance of adhering to the recommended schedule. It is a valuable resource for parents and others who may feel confused about the misleading information that is circulated about vaccines.

Please visit www.vaccinateyourbaby.org to get the facts: vaccines save lives.

This morning marks an exciting event - the launch of the Vaccinate Your Baby campaign organized by Every Child By Two. We are tremendously excited about this very needed initiative!

Amanda Peet is appearing on ABC’s Good Morning America to discuss the importance of childhood immunization. Later in the morning, ECBT will hold a press conference in New York City attended by ECBT co-founders Rosalynn Carter and Betty Bumpers (former First Ladies of the United States and the State of Arkansas, respectively) and American Academy of Pediatrics President Renee Jenkins. They will be joined by vaccine expert Paul Offit, M.D., and autism mom Ann Hotez.

Congratulations and thanks to ECBT and its eloquent spokeswoman Amanda Peet!

It’s been a busy few months behind the scenes at VFV. As any of you who have helped start organizations already knew, there is a lot of work involved!

We do hope to do more frequent blogging as we iron out the internal stuff. There’s no lack of topics to talk about. We’ll also be launching a full-out membership campaign and providing, at long last, a link for online donation.

One thing we did recently that seems to have made an impact was to write a letter to CBS News objecting to their unfair treatment of three fellow immunization advocates. This letter quickly made its way to an anti-vaccine organization, an occurrence which has caught the interest of several pro-science bloggers.

Readers who were directed here by those posts, welcome and please join! Every member adds to our strength in advocating for sound immunization policy.

You can also send your reactions to CBS’s report via the User Feedback link at the very bottom of this page.

Going back a few weeks, we had the honor of seeing a VFV-authored Letter to the Editor published in Pediatrics. We were responding with hearty approval to an earlier article that called for a more vigorous response to anti-vaccine activism.

Thanks for sticking with us through these slow first months. We’re itching to really get going and do the work we set out to do.

On Monday, June 2, Voices For Vaccines was proud to join a host of other health-related groups in communicating to Congress the continued importance of immunization and our concern for unfounded fears that deter some people from obtaining potentially life-saving vaccines for themselves or allowing their children to receive the protection of vaccination.

We hope that policymakers will hear our message:  that the scientific consensus continues to support
vaccination as a key means of preventing disease, disability, and death.

Read it here:  Open Letter

We’re very excited to use this speedy way to communicate on vaccine topics of current interest as well as some that never lose their currency. We hope you’ll read and comment often. Consider adding our blog to your automated feed, if you have one, and you’ll never miss what’s new here. Let’s start the conversation with some fundamental thoughts about vaccines.

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Even people who have been vaccinated rely on high immunization rates for some of their safety from vaccine-preventable diseases. Why? No vaccine is 100% effective, and sometimes, a person’s immune system doesn’t react to a vaccine by generating immunity. That person thinks he or she is protected, but is not!

He or she will still generally be safe from disease, however, as long as the great majority of people in the community are immune - enough that even if the infectious organism is introduced into the population, it won’t find enough susceptible hosts to create an outbreak that continues the spread of disease.

This is the concept of “herd immunity,” and it’s why getting immunized benefits not only you but also everyone you encounter. It’s also why you should be concerned about the immunization rate in your community even if your family is fully immunized.

People whose vaccines didn’t make them immune are actually a relatively small proportion of the people who benefit from herd immunity. Most of those who depend on it are babies - they aren’t fully protected against many vaccine-preventable diseases until they’re toddlers, so before then, it’s the fact that those diseases aren’t prevalent in their environment that keeps them from getting sick. Another major group is those who have medical contraindications to vaccination. Not only do these people have to rely on others not to let diseases creep into the community, but they’re often at elevated risk of bad outcomes if they do get infected.

Herd immunity is just one of the reasons we at Voices For Vaccines are enthusiastic supporters of vaccination.