Financing vaccination of children and adolescents: National Vaccine Advisory Committee recommendations.

Increases in the number and cost of vaccines routinely recommended for children and adolescents have raised concerns about the ability of the current systems for vaccine financing and delivery to ensure that all children and adolescents have access to all routinely recommended vaccinations without financial barriers. The National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC) was chartered in 1988 to advise and to make recommendations to the director of the National Vaccine Program and the Assistant Secretary for Health at the US Department of Health and Human Services on matters related to the prevention of infectious diseases through vaccination. In October 2006, NVAC established a Vaccine Financing Working Group to explore approaches for child and adolescent vaccine financing. The Vaccine Financing Working Group was charged with establishing a process for obtaining stakeholder input regarding challenges to creating optimal approaches to vaccine financing in both the public and private sectors. The goal of this process was to develop recommendations to ensure that all children and adolescents have access to all routinely recommended vaccinations without financial barriers.