Our practice has experienced an increase in parents requesting to delay or decline vaccinations. This may be as result of celebrities claiming that vaccines harmed their children or as a result of the increase in the numbers of vaccines and injections in recent years. There is a larger number of parents that do want to immunize their children and are curious if they are families that do not immunize their children in our practice.
My colleagues and I as part of promoting preventive care are investing a significant amount of time educating our families, in vaccines use in children’s well child visits. In response to this demand of time and energy, we developed a vaccine policy:
- We firmly believe in the safety of vaccines
- We firmly believe that ALL children and Young adults should receive the recommended vaccines according to the schedule published by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics
- We firmly believe, based on all available literature, evidence and current studies, that vaccines Do NOT cause Autism or other developmental disabilities.
- We firmly believe that thimerosal a presentative that has been in vaccines for decades and remains in some vaccines, does not cause autism or other developmental disabilities.
- We firmly believe that vaccinating children and young adults may be the single most important health promoting intervention we perform as parents/caregivers. The recommended vaccines and their schedule given are the results of years and years of scientific study and data gathering on millions of children by thousands of our brightest scientist and physicians.
These things being said, we recognize that there has been and will likely be controversy surrounding vaccination. The success of a healthy nation is based on prevention, is precisely because vaccines are so effective at preventing illness that we are even discussing whether or not they should be given.
Because of vaccines many of you have never seen a child with polio, tetanus, whooping cough, bacterial meningitis or even chickenpox, or known a friend or family member whose child died of one of these diseases, such success can make us complacent or even indifferent about vaccinating, but such an attitude, if it becomes widespread, can only lead to tragic results.
Furthermore, by not vaccinating your child you are taking a selfish advantage of thousands of others who do vaccine for children, which decrease the likelihood that your child contract one of these diseases. We feel such an attitude to be self-centered and unacceptable.
We are making you aware of these facts not to scare you, but to emphasize the importance of vaccinating your child. We recognize that the choice may be very emotional, but we recommend as healthcare providers is the right thing to do.
Finally, if you should absolutely refuse to vaccinate your child despite all our efforts, we respect your belief, however, we will ask you to find another health care provider who shares your views. We do not keep a list of such providers, nor would recommend any such physician.
Please recognize that by not vaccinating you are putting your child and our patients at unnecessary risk for life-threatening illness and disability and even death.
As medical professionals, we feel very strongly that vaccinating children on schedule with currently available vaccines is absolutely the right thing to do for all children and young adults.
Thank you for your time in reading this policy, and please feel free to discuss any questions of concerns you may have aboutvaccines with any of us.
Cordially,
The APC Pediatrics Team