| Are you wondering where to find free immunization education materials to help explain the vaccination schedule, vaccine safety, and the importance of vaccines to patients or patients’ parents? Free-of-charge, attractive, informative patient handouts are available to help healthcare professionals during clinic visits and to give patients more detailed information to read and consider on their own. This column highlights some helpful sources for patient handouts available online from the Immunization Action Coalition (IAC), the Vaccine Education Center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (VEC), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). |
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| From the Immunization Action Coalition |
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| IAC’s Patient Schedules web section provides user-friendly immunization schedules for your patients of any age, including babies, children up to age 10 years, preteens and teens, and adults. Other handouts help people with certain medical conditions or risk factors, including pregnancy, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV infection determine which vaccines they might need. All of these schedules are available in both English and Spanish, and some are translated in up to eight different languages. |
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| IAC’s Parent Handouts web section features a wide variety of pieces, including many handouts related to vaccine safety and efficacy that counteract the most common anti-vaccine arguments. |
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| IAC’s Vaccine Summaries web section includes 20 one-page, easy-to-read handouts for parents, teens, and adults that promote vaccination against vaccine-preventable diseases. These handouts emphasize the risks of vaccine-preventable diseases and the importance of vaccination. |
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| Unprotected People Reports web section offers a collection of more than 100 compelling personal accounts and case reports from real people who have suffered from or lost loved ones due to vaccine-preventable diseases. Providers may find these stories to be their most helpful tool against the flood of anecdotal anti-vaccine information. |
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| From the Vaccine Education Center |
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| VEC has developed 15 Q&A patient handouts covering vaccine topics of interest, including titles such as: |
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| You can download all of these handouts in English and Spanish from the VEC website |
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| VEC also offers four colorful booklets covering immunization of infants, teens, and adults, as well as one about vaccine safety. These great booklets can be downloaded here. |
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| From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention |
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| CDC offers many free downloadable flyers and brochures for parents, including: |
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| In collaboration with the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatrics, CDC developed a number of educational materials outlining successful communication strategies for talking with parents about vaccines, as well as a parent handout explaining the risks and responsibilities associated with not vaccinating. |
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