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The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies (2013)

Chapter: Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×

Appendix F

Biographical Sketches of Committee Members

Ada Sue Hinshaw, R.N., Ph.D. (Chair), is a professor and dean at the Graduate School of Nursing of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences as well as a professor and dean emeritus of the University of Michigan’s School of Nursing. She received her Ph.D. and master of arts in sociology from the University of Arizona, a master of nursing sciences from Yale University, and a bachelor of science from the University of Kansas. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine, a leader in nursing education and research, and a widely published scholar. Throughout her career, Dr. Hinshaw has conducted nursing research that focuses on the areas of quality of care, patient outcomes, measurement of those outcomes, and building positive work environments for nurses. Dr. Hinshaw was the first permanent director of the National Center for Nursing Research and the first director of the National Institute of Nursing Research at the National Institutes of Health. She led the institute in its support of disease prevention, health promotion, acute and chronic illness, and the environments that enhance nursing patient care outcomes. Dr. Hinshaw’s awards include the Midwest Nursing Research Society Lifetime Achievement Award, the United States Public Health Service’s Health Leader of the Year Award, the Elizabeth McWilliams Miller Award for Excellence in Nursing Research from Sigma Theta Tau, and the Nurse Scientist of the Year Award from the American Nurses Association. In addition, she has received 13 honorary doctorate degrees from universities in the United States and Canada.

Tomás J. Aragón, M.D., Dr.P.H., is the health officer of the city and county of San Francisco, California, director of population health and prevention

Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×

at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and medical director of the Center for Infectious Diseases and Emergency Readiness at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. He specializes in the epidemiology and control of infectious diseases, population and community health, public health preparedness, and epidemiological computing. In San Francisco, he oversees disease control and prevention, public health laboratory, and environmental health. At the University of California, Berkeley, he teaches epidemiology and conducts research.

Alfred Berg, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle. Dr. Berg received his professional education in family medicine and general preventive medicine and public health at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri; the University of Missouri; and the University of Washington. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1996. Dr. Berg’s research has focused on clinical epidemiology in primary care settings. He has been active on many expert panels using evidence-based methods to develop clinical guidance, including chair of the United States Preventive Services Task Force, cochair of the Otitis Media Panel convened by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality), chair and moderator of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Sexually Transmitted Disease Treatment Guidelines panel, a member of the American Medical Association/CDC panel producing Guidelines for Adolescent Preventive Services, and founding chair of CDC’s Evaluation of Genetic Applications in Practice and Prevention working group. He was recently appointed to the Methodology Committee of the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute. Dr. Berg has served on the Institute of Medicine’s Immunization Safety Review Committee (member), the Committee on the Treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (chair), the Committee on Standards for Systematic Reviews of Clinical Effectiveness Research (chair), and the Committee on Preventive Services for Women (member) and is currently on the Committee on the Governance and Financing of Graduate Medical Education.

Stephen L. Buka, M.S., M.A., Sc.D., is a professor in and chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Brown University and also directs Brown’s Center for Population Health and Clinical Epidemiology and Center for the Study of Human Development. He received a Sc.D. in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1988 and was a faculty member in its Departments of Maternal and Child Health, Epidemiology, and Society, Human Development and Health before moving to Brown in 2005. With training in epidemiology and developmental psychology, his research focuses on the causes and prevention of major psychiatric

Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×

and cognitive disorders. Current studies include investigations of prenatal risks for schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities, and addictive disorders; work on the long-term effects of maternal smoking on offspring health and behavior; community-level influences on youth substance use and delinquency; and community-based strategies for the prevention of adolescent drinking and drug use. He has served on multiple panels for the National Institutes of Health and other federal organizations.

R. Alta Charo, J.D., is the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (UW), where she is on the faculty of the Law School and the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the medical school. She also serves on the faculty of the UW Masters in Biotechnology Studies program and lectures in the master’s of public health program of the Department of Population Health Sciences. Alta Charo (B.A., biology, Harvard, 1979; J.D., Columbia, 1982) is an elected member of the World Technology Network (2004) and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters (2005). In 2006 she was elected to membership in the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine. Professor Charo served on President Obama’s transition team, where she was a member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review team, focusing her attention particularly on transition issues related to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), bioethics, stem cell policy, and women’s reproductive health. She was on leave from 2009 to 2011 to serve as a senior policy adviser on emerging technology issues in the Office of the Commissioner at FDA. Professor Charo offers courses on public health law, bioethics, biotechnology law, food and drug law, reproductive rights, torts, and legislative drafting. In addition, she has served on the UW Hospital clinical ethics committee, the University’s Institutional Review Board for the protection of human subjects in medical research, and the University’s Bioethics Advisory Committee. Professor Charo’s advisory committee service for the federal government includes the 1994 NIH Human Embryo Research Panel and President Clinton’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission (1996 to 2001), where she participated in drafting its reports Cloning Human Beings (1997), Research Involving Persons with Mental Disorders that May Affect Decision-making Capacity (1998), Research Involving Human Biological Materials: Ethical Issues and Policy Guidance (1999), Ethical Issues in Human Stem Cell Research (1999), Ethical and Policy Issues in International Research: Clinical Trials in Developing Countries (2001), and Ethical and Policy Issues in Research Involving Human Participants (2001). From 2001 to 2008 she was a member of the Board on Life Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academies. She served as its liaison to the

Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×

Committee on Research Standards and Practices to Prevent Destructive Applications of Biotechnology as well as its committee to develop national voluntary guidelines for stem cell research. She also served as a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Smallpox Vaccination Program Implementation, and since 2006 she has served on the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice of the Institute of Medicine. In 2005 and 2006, she was a member of the committee to review FDA and the U.S. national system for the assurance of drug safety.

Gerry Fairbrother, Ph.D., is a senior scholar at AcademyHealth, an adjunct professor of health policy at the George Washington University, and professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico and the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Fairbrother’s research areas include measuring quality of care, the impact of churning in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and effects of health information technology on health care outcomes. She is currently examining the impact of health information technology on performance in the Cincinnati Beacon Communities Project and the impact of an improvement intervention in School-Based Health Centers as part of one demonstration project of the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act. She has led investigations on gaps and patterns of enrollment in child health insurance, barriers and cost to enroll in these programs, the impact of Medicaid managed care on preventive screening for children, and the impact of financial incentives on physician behavior. Dr. Fairbrother holds a Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University, is a fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and of the Ambulatory Pediatric Association, and is a member of the National Association of Social Insurance. She serves on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Technical Expert Panel on National Impact Assessment of CMS Quality Measures and on the National Policy Advisory Committee of the National Institute of Children’s Healthcare Quality. In recognition of her work, she received the Best Ohio Health Policy Award for Independent Scholar or Practitioner from the Health Policy Institute of Ohio.

Elena Fuentes-Afflick, M.D., M.P.H., is professor of pediatrics, epidemiology, and biostatistics and Vice Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Fuentes-Afflick completed her residency and chief residency in pediatrics at UCSF, followed by training in epidemiology and health policy. Dr. Fuentes-Afflick joined the faculty at UCSF in 1993. Dr. Fuentes-Afflick has served on the National Advisory Council of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as well as the National Advisory Committee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Clinical

Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×

Scholars Program. In 2009 she was president of the Society for Pediatric Research. Her research focuses on Latino health, with a specific interest in the impact of acculturation, immigration status, perinatal outcomes, and body mass. Dr. Fuentes-Afflick was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2010.

Sidney M. Gospe, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., holds the Herman and Faye Sarkowsky Endowed Chair and is the head of the Division of Pediatric Neurology at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital. Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Washington in 2000, he served on the faculty of the University of California, Davis, for 13 years. Dr. Gospe received his undergraduate education at Stanford University and M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Duke University. He completed his postgraduate medical education in both pediatrics and child neurology at the Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Gospe’s laboratory research has focused on neurotoxicology, in particular, the neurodevelopmental effects of maternal exposure to certain toxicants during pregnancy. He has conducted studies designed to help determine the effects of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke on brain development and whether the fetal brain is more vulnerable during certain periods of development. His earlier work focused on the effects of maternal exposure to the organic solvent toluene on fetal growth and development. Dr. Gospe’s clinical research concerns pyridoxine (vitamin B6)-dependent epilepsy (PDE), a rare familial cause of infantile seizures and associated developmental disability. He collaborates in biochemical and molecular studies of patients with PDE and has established a national registry for patients with this uncommon inherited disorder.

Paul A. Greenberger, M.D., is an attending physician at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and professor of medicine in the Division of Allergy-Immunology, Department of Medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He served as Fellowship Program Director from 1992 to 2007 and has helped oversee the postgraduate education for 128 allergy-immunology fellows over the past 33 years. Dr. Greenberger received an undergraduate degree from Purdue University with highest distinction and a medical degree from Indiana University in Indianapolis, where he did his internship at the Methodist Hospital. He completed an internal medicine residency at the Jewish Hospital of St. Louis, Washington University. He was a fellow in allergy-immunology at Northwestern University, where he has been a faculty member since 1977. Dr. Greenberger’s research interests include reduction of allergic antibody reactivity utilizing the neuropeptide substance P, idiopathic anaphylaxis, drug allergy, severe and fatal asthma, and allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis. Dr. Greenberger has published 260 original articles and 90 reviews and book chapters. He is coeditor of

Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×

Patterson’s Allergic Diseases and all three editions of the Northwestern University Allergy-Immunology Syllabus: Residents and Students and Drug Allergy and Protocols for Management of Drug Allergies. Dr. Greenberger reviews manuscripts for many journals and was co-editor in chief of Allergy and Asthma Proceedings for 12 years. He has contributed to various practice parameters in the field of allergy-immunology and served as chair of the Allergy-Immunology Residency Review Committee of the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education. Dr. Greenberger is a recipient of the Special Recognition and Distinguished Service Award of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, of which he served as president during 2009 and 2010.

Daniel F. Heitjan, Ph.D., M.Sc., is professor of biostatistics and statistics and director of the Biostatistics Core Facility in the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania. After earning a Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Chicago in 1985, he served on the faculties of the University of California, Los Angeles (1985 to 1988), Pennsylvania State University (1988 to 1995), and Columbia University (1995 to 2002) before moving to the University of Pennsylvania. He was the 1994-1995 Stanley S. Schor Visiting Scholar at Merck & Co., Inc., and was elected a fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1997 and a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2012. Dr. Heitjan is an associate editor of Statistics in Biopharmaceutical Research and Clinical Trials and a statistical editor of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. He was formerly a member of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Healthcare Technology and Decision Sciences study section and is a regular reviewer of grants for the National Institutes of Health, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and other agencies. He was program chair of the 2005 Joint Statistical Meetings, the largest annual statistical conference in the world; was 2009 chair of the American Statistical Association’s Biometrics Section, the largest and oldest of the American Statistical Association’s sections; and is currently president-elect of the Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society. Dr. Heitjan’s research interests include the theory and methodology of statistical analysis with incomplete data, clinical trial design, Bayesian statistics, health economics, and statistical methods for smoking cessation studies. His recent research in smoking cessation involves microsimulation modeling of the cost-effectiveness of smoking cessation treatment strategies, statistical methods for the analysis of rounded daily cigarette counts, comparison of cigarette counts recorded by time line follow back and electronic momentary assessment, and statistical modeling of time-to-event data on repeated smoking quits and lapse.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×

Annette C. Leland, M.B.A., graduated from Occidental College in 1980 with an A.B. in economics with an emphasis in econometrics. She received an M.B.A. in 1984 from the University of Southern California. Ms. Leland began her career as an economic forecaster at General Telephone before returning to graduate school. She subsequently held leadership roles in marketing for Redken Laboratories and for the Nutrition Counseling Institute, a start-up nutrition/weight-loss venture, where she coordinated with various local hospitals, developed a marketing campaign, and marketing materials. Ms. Leland then moved on to work as a liaison between Clinique Cosmetics and the Kaufmanns Department Store chain, overseeing branch performance, training new employees, and coordinating special events. In 1989, Ms. Leland had her first child and made the choice to be a stay-at-home parent. In 1995, her family moved to the Washington, DC, area and she became active in volunteering as a reading and art class assistant at the local elementary school and volunteering in several capacities at the Washington Waldorf School. Her second child required intensive occupational, speech, and vision therapies, which inspired Ms. Leland to dedicate her time to learning more about these issues. Ms. Leland continued to be involved in her children’s schools as the family moved to Connecticut, to Italy, and then back to Washington, DC. Ms. Leland graduated from the Northern Virginia Institute Waldorf Teacher Training program while continuing to volunteer extensively at the Washington Waldorf School, both in and out of the classroom. She has continued to actively educate herself on the medical challenges that her children encounter. Her youngest child has participated in a 2-year clinical drug trial for type 1 diabetes at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, and she has dedicated significant time to learning about the disease and how clinical drug trials operate. Currently, she serves as Annual Bazaar Chairperson, Parent Organization Steering Committee Chair, and 2nd Grade Class Reading Assistant for the Washington Waldorf School.

Pejman Rohani, Ph.D., is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, epidemiology, and complex systems at the University of Michigan. His training was in mathematics (B.Sc., University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom) and population ecology (Ph.D., Imperial College, London, United Kingdom). He has held posts at the University of Georgia (2002 to 2009) and was a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge (1996 to 2002). His research focuses on the population biology of infectious diseases, with a strong emphasis on the use of mathematical, computational, and statistical approaches to the elucidation of host-pathogen interactions. Currently, research in his lab focuses on the epidemiology and evolution of pertussis, dengue viruses, polio, and avian influenza viruses. He has published more than 75 papers, including 4 in Science,

Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×

1 in Nature, 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and 1 in Lancet. He has also coauthored a book on modeling infectious disease published by Princeton University Press. He has worked on numerous occasions in an advisory capacity with the World Health Organization’s Quantitative Analysis of Vaccine Related Research and served on the scientific advisory board of the Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne and Enteric Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Lainie Friedman Ross, M.D., Ph.D., is the Carolyn and Matthew Bucksbaum Professor of Clinical Medical Ethics; professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, Medicine, and Surgery and the College; associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics; and codirector of the Clinical and Translational Science Award at the University of Chicago. Dr. Ross has published two books on pediatric ethics: Children, Families and Health Care Decision Making (Oxford University Press, 1998), and Children in Medical Research: Access Versus Protection (Oxford University Press, 2006). She has also published more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals in the areas of pediatric ethics, transplantation ethics, research ethics, and genetics and ethics. Dr. Ross earned an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University (1982), an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (1986), and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University (1996). She did her residency at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (1986 to 1988) and at Columbia University (1988 to 1989). She currently serves as the chair of the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Bioethics and is a member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections.

Pauline A. Thomas, M.D., F.A.A.P., is associate professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health at the New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) and in the School of Public Health of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. She is codirector of the NJMS Preventive Medicine Residency. Previously, Dr. Thomas spent 23 years at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), where she served as director of AIDS Surveillance, director of the Immunization Program, and assistant commissioner for surveillance. Her work at DOHMH included development of the World Trade Center Health Registry, studying the health effects of more than 70,000 people exposed to the aftermath of the disaster at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Dr. Thomas received undergraduate and medical degrees from Yale University. She completed a residency in pediatrics at the University of Rochester and after her residency joined the Centers for Disease Control

Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×

and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. She is chair of the Epidemiology Section of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). She recently served on the Institute of Medicine Committee to Review Adverse Effects of Vaccines. Dr. Thomas has authored more than 60 journal articles and maintains a small part-time private pediatric practice in a multispecialty medical group in New Jersey.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." Institute of Medicine. 2013. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13563.
×
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Vaccines are among the most safe and effective public health interventions to prevent serious disease and death. Because of the success of vaccines, most Americans today have no firsthand experience with such devastating illnesses as polio or diphtheria. Health care providers who vaccinate young children follow a schedule prepared by the U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Under the current schedule, children younger than six may receive as many as 24 immunizations by their second birthday. New vaccines undergo rigorous testing prior to receiving FDA approval; however, like all medicines and medical interventions, vaccines carry some risk.

Driven largely by concerns about potential side effects, there has been a shift in some parents' attitudes toward the child immunization schedule. The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety identifies research approaches, methodologies, and study designs that could address questions about the safety of the current schedule.

This report is the most comprehensive examination of the immunization schedule to date. The IOM authoring committee uncovered no evidence of major safety concerns associated with adherence to the childhood immunization schedule. Should signals arise that there may be need for investigation, however, the report offers a framework for conducting safety research using existing or new data collection systems.

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