Vaccine Education

Vaccines have literally transformed the landscape of medicine over the course of the 20th century.

Before vaccines, parents in the United States could expect that every year:

• Polio would paralyze 10,000 children.
• Rubella (German measles) would cause birth defects and mental retardation in as many as 20,000 newborns.
• Measles would infect about 4 million children, killing 3,000.
• Diphtheria would be one of the most common causes of death in school-aged children.
• A bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) would cause meningitis in 15,000 children, leaving many with permanent brain damage.
• Pertussis (whooping cough) would kill thousands of infants.

Vaccines have reduced and, in some cases, eliminated many diseases that killed or severely disabled people just a few generations before. For most Americans today, vaccines are a routine part of healthcare.

However, the disappearance of many childhood diseases has led some parents to question whether vaccines are still necessary. Further, a growing number of parents are concerned that vaccines may actually be the cause of diseases such as autism, hyperactivity, developmental delay, attention deficit disorder, diabetes, multiple sclerosis (MS), and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) among others. These concerns have caused some parents to delay or withhold vaccines for their children. Specific information on each of these concerns can be found in the Vaccine Safety section of the site.

The Vaccine Education Center
To provide complete, up-to-date and reliable information about vaccines to parents and healthcare professionals, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia created the Vaccine Education Center.

The Vaccine Education Center, through its Web site, videos, informational tear sheets  and speakers programs, provides information on every vaccine.  

To view these files you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0. You can download the latest version of Adobe Acrobat here for free.

These informational resources also discuss how vaccines work, how they are made, who recommends vaccines, when they should be given, whether they are still necessary, and, most importantly, whether they are safe.

The Center has also established the Parents PACK program to develop a dialogue with parents, provide frequent vaccine information, and establish a place for parents to get up-to-date information and answers to questions about vaccines. Visit the Parents PACK site or sign up for the monthly newsletter by going to Parents PACK home.

The Center is funded by endowments from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and foundation grants. The Center does not receive any support from pharmaceutical companies.

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the nation's first children's hospital, has been a center of vaccine research and education for over 125 years. For example, the rubella vaccine, a vaccine that prevents what was at one time the most common cause of birth defects in the United States, was developed at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology.