Vax Talk Podcast
Vax Talk is the podcast for people who want to do something about outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases and who understand that knowledge is power. We will discuss the latest news about vaccines and the impact they have on our communities, our families, and our friendships.
Episodes
Special guest Dr. Joe Bresee from the Task Force for Global Health shares expert insights on pandemic preparedness, vaccine innovation, and global immunization efforts.
We sit down with renowned vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit to explore the critical role of school vaccine requirements in protecting public health. Dr. Offit shares insights from his decades…
In this episode of VaxTalk, we dive into the latest on mpox, previously known as monkeypox. Dr. Krutika Kuppalli from the University of Texas Southwestern joins us to explain what…
For the first time in 25 years, a child in Gaza has come down with a case of paralytic polio. This situation was serious enough to produce a cease-fire between…
Karen recently attended a conference where one of her favorite vaccine champions, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, medical director at the Association of Immunization Managers, asked her when she could come on…
As of April 11, the U.S. has seen 121 measles cases this year. Patsy Stinchfield, President of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, takes us back in time to previous…
What caused SARS-CoV-2? Are vaccine mandates necessary? Is COVID here to stay? How can we protect ourselves in this new world? These are just some of the questions Dr. Paul…
Last fall, NBC News journalist Brandy Zadrozny took a hike with Robert F Kennedy Jr and published her interview with him. She has written extensively about him and the anti-vaccine…
No Google Allowed! Put your Google down, and join our Vax Ambassadors for some fun! Each month, our Vax Ambassadors meet to learn something new about vaccines. This December, we…
The pandemic caused a lot of pain, from the loss of lives to COVID itself to the burnout and moral injury of people working on the front lines. Our world…
In this episode, we break down vaccine communication, from the days of "Let the Science Speak for Itself" to the political partisanship of the pandemic. To assist us, we invited…
Lately, Twitter has become a cesspool of the worst humans spreading the worst misinformation. Except for one bright spot: The Real Truther. We invited The Real Truther to our podcast…
Dr. Jonathan Howard’s new book, We Want Them Infected, traces this ill-begotten quest and the inevitable pseudoscience that followed. Listen in to our conversation with him!
It feels like anti-vaxxers are bringing public health to court in droves. Does this spell the doom of people who don't like getting measles and polio? To explain why we…
At the end of 2021, everyone may have thought that had been the Year of the Vaccine, but 2022 came along and said, "Hold my vial of mostly saline." In…
In many ways, mRNA vaccines are a game-changer, but not an unexpected one. For this episode, we talked to one of the scientists who has been pursuing mRNA vaccines for…
A new study seems to connect childhood vaccines to asthma. Or does it? We invited our friend and hero, Dr. Paul Offit, to the show to discuss this study and…
Remember the old refrain: polio is only a plane ride away. We invited the excellent Blima Marcus to talk to us about polio hitting U.S. shores.
Flu is lingering into June and RSV is messing with kids off-season. To find out what is happening and how vaccines can help, we talked to Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Dr. Bill Schaffner.
People who are vaccine hesitant can become confident, like our two guests. Join this fun conversation about how we can all talk to each other, featuring Lydia Greene and Heather Simpson from Back to the Vax.
A new organization–SAFE Communities Coalition–is working hard to combat bad vaccine legislation and promote the good stuff.
Podcast episode with Dr. Tara Smith discussing how to handle family members who are skeptical of COVID-19 vaccination.
Parents have a lot of questions about COVID vaccines and their kids, so we invited those parents to a Zoom chat with nationally-known expert and pediatric nurse practitioner, Patsy Stinchfield.…
COVID, always up to something, has spun out a new variant: Omicron. There are so many unknowns, and so much anxiety caused by the unknown, that we invited Dr. Katelyn…
It’s not shocking that social media spreads misinformation, but a new report from the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights just published a chilling report detailing how fertile…
Science types hate predicting the future–and LJ Tan from immunize.org is no exception. So we invited him on to the podcast to discuss what we do know about the upcoming influenza season
In this episode, we cover so much COVID-19 information that it may break the podcastosphere. Want to know about Delta? Talked about it. Kids in school? Check. Surges? Yep. And…
Few people have studied internet disinformation for longer or in more depth than NBC’s Brandy Zadrozny, so we invited her to swing by and talk to us about vaccine disinformation.…
This week, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted unanimously to recommend the Pfizer vaccine be given to kids ages 12-15. We invited long-time ACIP member Patsy Stinchfield…
Chelsea Clinton comes from a background of public service, so why is she working so hard on global health right now? And why is she willing to take a stand…
Don’t worry! We aren’t switching sides. Heather Simpson, former anti-vaccine influencer, already switched sides. She took a look at the science and decided she needed to vaccinate herself and her…
Dr. Peter Sears is the not-famous brother of Dr. Jim and Dr. Bob Sears and a family physician. He is also an strong advocate for on-time immunization, even as his…
Millions of people have received a COVID-19 vaccine, which gives us a lot of information about the safety of these vaccines. We asked Dr. Stanley Plotkin, inventor of the rubella…
It’s here! The COVID-19 vaccine is going into people’s arms as you read the letters in this post. Listen, this pandemic has been difficult in a way that redefines the…
The anti-vaccine movement is as old as vaccines, but the modern movement began with concerns about the whole-cell pertussis vaccine and seizures. It famously later morphed into the primary purveyor…
Vaccine science is now fairly widely understood in the media and the general public, so where does someone wanting to spread disinformation about vaccines turn? To court. We invited UC…
As we all wrap up National Immunization Awareness Month, Karen talks to loyal listener Amy about her son’s organ transplant and then quizzes her to see if she can spot…
Often, when we scratch beneath the surface of someone who is anti-vaccine, we find conspiracy theories abound. We are also seeing them grow during the time of COVID. Why are…
While the world is consumed with justifiable fears of COVID-19, measles, polio, and even diphtheria are finding pathways to resurgence. What is going on with those routine childhood vaccines? Are…
The world’s vaccinologists are racing against time to find a safe, effective vaccine to protect against SARS-CoV-2. In our latest Vax Talk episode, we talked to our friend and infectious…
Have you gotten questions about coronavirus and warm weather? Ibuprofen? Bioweapons? A lot of misinformation and disinformation is circulating concerning COVID-19, and people are unsure how to talk to others…
No vaccine for coronavirus exists (yet?), but learning about this newest emerging disease and watching how the epidemic is handled can teach us a lot about public health strategies that…
What happens when you bring to HPV Vaccine is Cancer Prevention champions together? A great conversation about how to encourage parents to start and complete the HPV vaccine series in…
Shelle Allen’s healthy, happy daughter, Madi, was 12 years old when she asked to be picked up from a birthday party. After a day, she figured Madi had “just the…
We know that parents refusing vaccines is an area of concern for all of us, but more frequently, parents are asking doctors to give vaccines at a slower rate or…
When the good folks at WithinReach in Washington state invited us to come talk at their immunization summit, we were more than thrilled. Recording a podcast in front of a…
Dr. Richard Pan has been a champion for community immunity his entire career, from his beginnings as a resident in Pittsburgh to his work in the California legislature to eliminate…
It’s still National Immunization Awareness Month, which means Vax Talk is still having Game Show episodes all of August. Melody Butler, of Nurses Who Vaccinate fame, swung by the podcast…
It’s National Immunization Awareness Month! Continuing with our GAME SHOW theme, we invited Keith Law to play Offit, Wakefield, or Dan Brown. I first met Keith on Twitter during a…
You’ve seen the social media posts–people purposely trying to get on your nerves about vaccines. Sometimes, though, trolling is actually satirizing for a cause. We decided to have fun with…
It’s the first day of National Immunization Awareness Month, and we are all working with brand new themes this year. In celebration, we declared that our podcast, Vax Talk, would…
Rotary International has worked for decades to deliver polio vaccines to the most remote corners of the world in order to eradicate polio permanently from the globe. But what does this…
Thus far in 2019, the United States has experienced nearly 1,000 cases of measles–and we can expect more. But when can we expect the outbreaks to end, and what can…
As a high school senior, I made my first phone call to a doctor to schedule an appointment when I was sick. I only did so because my mother suggested…
The past few weeks have been active in the vaccine advocacy world–and in the anti-vaccine activist movement. Normal things, such as the ACIP (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) meeting and…
Lately, I have noticed how anti-vaccine activists are using the law to shape how we are all talking about vaccines. Sometimes they file lawsuits, sometimes they fight legislation, and sometimes…
The HPV (human papilloma virus) vaccine lags far behind other adolescent vaccines when it comes to immunization rates. In 2016, 60% of adolescents received at least one dose of HPV,…
Every year, I post on social media asking who among my friends needs to be pestered to get a flu shot. And every year, some smart aleck tells me he…
Is there wiggle room about the idea that vaccines do not cause autism? Is it possible that sometimes in some particularly vulnerable children that vaccines act as a trigger for…
Nurses are trusted healthcare providers because they are caring, smart, and hard-working. We all love our nurses, so when they speak out against vaccines, they present a special danger. A…
Who’s your favorite Superman? Christopher Reeve? Dean Cain? Henry Cavill? Ours is Jason Mendelsohn, the unassuming father of three who defeated Stage IV HPV throat cancer in order to urge…
For many in the vaccine advocacy world, we feel as though we’ve watched Ethan Posard grow up. First, we saw him receive his adolescent Tdap on film in his sister’s…
Thanks to decades of awareness campaigns, parents are no longer surprised at a well-child check that their babies will be getting vaccines. But often, they are surprised or confused by…
We love that our members are active podcast listeners, too. The purpose of the Vax Talk podcast is to start conversations that engage regular (read non-vaccine advocacy) folks. We were…
Pregnancy overflows with decision-making. Tests and baby products and nutrition and unsolicited advice are enough to make a pregnant brain swirl in the confusion of it all. It’s no wonder…
“I read this awful story about a girl who got that vaccine and…” Yep, social media and vaccines: the intersection where the worst information spreads the fastest and friendships end.…
There’s a narrative amongst anti-vaccine activists that people who work in the vaccine world are doing it for the money. Be they pediatricians or advocates or pharmaceutical employees or government…
It is National Infant Immunization Week, and that means we are talking vaccines in infancy. In particular, we are encouraging people who are expecting babies and their loves ones to…
If I had a penny for every time I said, “I’m talking about mothers here because mothers are the people who usually make decisions about healthcare for their children,” I’d…
When I first heard that Dr. Chad Hayes (from Demystifying Pediatrics) and Natalie Newell (from the Science Moms film) were teaming up to do a podcast, I knew we had…
I don’t know if Dr. Paul Offit (author and doctor in Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) counts as famous, but for many in the pro-vaccine world, he certainly…
Well, maybe not everything. But a lot! If the Voices for Vaccines Facebook page is a gauge, this flu season is seeing the circulation of more flu myths than usual.…
“My sister-in law won’t vaccinated my nieces and nephews.” “My cousin has been posting anti-vaccine memes on Facebook.” “My best friend is convinced her child’s autism was caused by vaccines.”…
If you don’t know Tara Smith from Kent State, you should. That may be the main reason we asked her to be a guest on our most recent podcast. She’s…
Kimberly Coffey was 17 years old and days away from high school graduation when she caught what she thought was a case of flu. Days later, her family was saying…
It’s hard to talk about vaccines or autism without mentioning the sometime gastroenterologist, Andrew Wakefield. Almost everyone has at least a passing familiarity with Wakefield, even if it is just…
