Teens are new focus of vaccination efforts

State health officials, educators and doctors need to start developing policies that can help teens and young adults get the vaccines they need, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official said last week.

Newly available vaccines such as the meningitis vaccine and a whooping cough booster are now recommended for teens, but there is not an official mechanism for ensuring that they get them, said Dr. Larry Pickering of the CDC’s National Immunization Program.

States ensure that most young children are vaccinated by making the shots a requirement to get into day care or school. Last week the CDC reported that 81% of children 19 months to 3 years old were fully vaccinated.

But there is not a similar way to get teens in to see the doctor, let alone get vaccinated.

Some, but not all, states have passed laws requiring new college students to either be vaccinated against meningitis or to receive information about the vaccine, Pickering said. Vaccination is not regulated on the federal level in the United States.

“New strategies to improve adolescent immunization rates and provide other recommended preventive services must be developed and implemented,” Pickering told a news conference sponsored by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

The NFID estimated that 35 million U.S. adolescents are missing at least one recommended vaccine.

While young children make at least annual visits to the pediatrician, teens often never see a doctor unless seriously ill.

“Adolescents are likely to bristle at the idea of visiting their pediatrician (i.e., ‘baby doctor’) and their sense of invincibility makes disease prevented by vaccines seem remote to their lives,” the foundation said in a report on teen vaccination.

“We need to educate people so they understand why they are being immunized and the importance of protecting against disease,” Pickering said.

Young children now receive many more vaccines than older children did, because more are available. Teens may need boosters against measles, mumps and whooping cough and may never have been vaccinated against chickenpox, hepatitis B, meningitis or pneumococcal disease.

The CDC estimates that 78,000 people are infected with hepatitis B each year in the U.S., but most do not have symptoms and do not even realize it. Most of them are in the 20-to-49 age range, and they can develop liver failure and liver cancer.

Bacterial meningitis can kill within hours and is especially likely to affect teens and young adults.

Having policies in place now will help make it easier to vaccinate adolescents when new vaccines hit the market, Pickering said.

Vaccines in development include an HPV vaccine to prevent infection with human papillomavirus, a common sexually transmitted wart virus that causes cervical cancer.

Future vaccines may also protect against other STDs such as chlamydia and herpes, as well as the streptococci that cause strep throat.