Like Parent, Like Child—Especially When It Comes to Vaccinating

We all want to do everything we can do to make sure that our patients are fully vaccinated. As part of that, we look for predictors of which children might not be vaccinated.  Have you ever considered that a parent’s own immunization status might give you insight into which children will be vaccinated?  Robison and Osborn ( 10.1542/peds.2016-2883) used an Oregon immunization registry to look for concordance of adult to child reception of influenza vaccine and then determined if such concordance led to immunization of children and adolescents to other vaccinations.  As you will find by reading this study, if the parent has received an influenza vaccine,  their children are almost 3 times as likely to be immunized against influenza-but even more importantly, these children were also more likely to receive other recommended vaccinations including HPV. 

 Have you ever asked parents if their immunization status was up to date or if they plan on getting the influenza vaccine?  Doing so may lead to their children also getting vaccinated.  Check out this interesting study that may result in less vaccine hesitancy if you can first convince parents of their need to be fully up to date on their own immunizations—and the influenza vaccine is a great starting point.