Most vaccines available in the United States have been incorporated into vaccination schedules for infants and young children, age groups particularly at risk of contracting infectious diseases. High universal vaccination coverage is responsible for substantially reducing or nearly eliminating many of the diseases that once killed thousands of children each year in the US. Despite the success o...

BACKGROUND Rotavirus vaccine is recommended for all infants in Canada. To evaluate the logistics of implementing a universal rotavirus vaccination program, we compared the effectiveness of program implementation in jurisdictions with either a physician-administered or public health nurse-administered program. METHODS All infants born between October 1, 2010 and September 30, 2012 in Prince Ed...

BACKGROUND Although good progress has been achieved in expanding immunization of children in China, disparities exist across different provinces. Information gaps both from the service supply and demand sides hinder timely vaccination of children in rural areas. The rapid development of mobile health technology (mHealth) provides unprecedented opportunities for improving health services and rea...

Immunization is one of the major public health interventions to prevent childhood morbidity and death. The Expanded Programme on Immunization has gathered momentum worldwide since 1974. The range of vaccines in the programme is being expanded in the years to come. All across the globe, a high level of vaccination coverage has been reached and now needs to be sustained. In part, the coverage has...

BACKGROUND Taiwan's national vaccination program has successfully decreased the prevalence of hepatitis B infection after twenty years of implementation and might be indirectly beneficial to the second generation. In this study, we compared the hepatitis B infection status of two groups: pregnant Taiwanese women and other Southeast Asian women, who because they had immigrated later in life to T...

Before availability of varicella vaccine in the United States, an estimated 4 million varicella cases, 11,000-13,500 varicella-related hospitalizations, and 100-150 varicella-related deaths occurred annually. The varicella vaccination program was implemented in the United States in 1996 as a 1-dose routine childhood program. Based on data from two varicella active surveillance sites, the varice...

BACKGROUND In the Netherlands, human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination is part of a national program equally accessible for all girls invited for vaccination. To assess possible inequalities in vaccine uptake, we investigated differences between vaccinated and unvaccinated girls with regard to various characteristics, including education and ethnicity, (both associated with non-attendance to the...

The integration of public health practices with federal health care for American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) largely derives from three major factors: the sovereign nature of AI/AN tribes, the sociocultural characteristics exhibited by the tribes, and that AI/ANs are distinct populations residing in defined geographic areas. The earliest services consisted of smallpox vaccination to a f...