II. Scope, Planning, and Initial Steps §

The Middletown Project was undertaken as a combined trial and demonstration of how the Sabin oral poliovirus vaccine could be given on a city-wide, simultaneous or mass basis in an urban American community of approximately 30,000 population. Specific objectives were multiple. They included: the assessment of the immunological effectiveness of this immunizing agent when given in such a setting; a determination of the degree of public acceptance of the vaccine; a delineation of the respective roles in a community vaccination campaign of a research group such as the Yale University Poliomyelitis Study Unit, the City Health officer, and the practicing physicians; and an analysis of the actual problems or mechanics of vaccine administration. This was an ambitious project for a research group of the size of the Yale Poliomyelitis Study Unit, and, as mentioned in the preceding paper, it was far and away the largest vaccine trial as yet attempted by this group. Without the participation of graduate students from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health (Yale University) and of many more members of the faculty than had been recruited for such studies before, and without the vigorous participation of the Middletown Department of Health and its director, a study of this magnitude could never have been