While a big push has been made to improve childhood vaccination<\/a> rates, adult vaccination remains poor. According to the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, vaccine preventable deaths kill more Americans every year than either traffic accidents, breast cancer, or HIV\/AIDS<\/a>. For this reason, primary care physicians need to assume responsibility for developing new strategies to improve adult immunization rates.<\/p>\n According to the National Immunization Survey<\/a> released by the CDC in 2007 :<\/p>\n \u201cVaccination is the victim of its own success\u201d Because vaccine preventable diseases are now less visible, both patients and healthcare providers are naive to the risks associated with these diseases. Instead they are directly exposed to the perceived risks of the vaccines.<\/p>\n There is a new concept of \u201cvaccine hesitancy<\/a>\u201d in our society where vaccines are perceived as unsafe and unnecessary. This belief is driving poor adult vaccination rates. Health care professionals ought to focus on their role in addressing vaccine hesitancy. In a Canadian survey of over 4000 adults, between 55% and 59.7% of adults were willing to be vaccinated if recommended by their healthcare provider. Research shows that health professionals\u2019 knowledge of vaccines \u201chas been shown to be an important determinant of their own vaccine uptake, their intention to recommend the vaccine to their patients, and the vaccine uptake of their patients.\u201d This resource is aimed to provide concise and high yield vaccine education for primary care physicians in order to improve vaccine uptake among their patients.<\/p>\n Every year vaccine guidelines are updated! Refer to Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices<\/a> (ACIP) on the CDC website for yearly changes in vaccine guidelines<\/p>\n\n
Vaccine Hesitancy<\/h3>\n
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