Voices for Vaccines (VFV) has posted a new entry in its Vax Talk podcast series: What Is Health Equity, and What Does It Have to Do with Vaccines? A description from their web page appears below.

With the pandemic bringing a bright spotlight on vaccine hesitancy, people are under the impression that confidence varies by race and background. Why would that be, and how is it related to health equity? And what is health equity anyhow?

We invited University of Minnesota School of Medicine professor and health equity expert Dr. Nate Chomilo to our podcast to ask him all the questions about health equity we could think of and to drill down about vaccine equity, as well.

• Visit VFV website podcast page
• Subscribe to Vax Talk via Apple Podcasts or PodBean 

Voices for Vaccines is a national organization of parents and others who are dedicated to raising the level of the voices of immunization supporters. VFV invites everyone who values vaccines to become a member, use VFV tools in their own community, and sign up for VFV’s free newsletter. Please spread the word to your friends and colleagues to join VFV!

Related Links

• Voices for Vaccines website
• Voices for Vaccines Tools gateway page
• Join Voices for Vaccines and receive weekly email updates
• Follow Voices for Vaccines on Facebook

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Johns Hopkins' campaign, "Get the Facts about the Vax," helps people make informed decisions about COVID-19 vaccine
 
Johns Hopkins Center for Communications Programs' campaign Get the Facts about the Vax offers easily digestible and trustworthy information on the COVID-19 vaccines. The campaign materials are publicly accessible, providing accurate and research-driven information that can help people make an informed decision about getting vaccinated. 



To learn more about the "Get the Facts about the Vax" campaign and to access the campaign toolkit materials, visit www.vaxfacts.jhu.edu.

Related Links

• Johns Hopkins' Get the Facts about the Vax web page
• HUB press release: Johns Hopkins Launches Campaign to Help People Make Informed Decisions about Vaccines (4/8/21)

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IAC Spotlight! These updated IAC educational materials and web pages were released during May and June

IAC Express regularly provides readers with information about IAC’s new and updated educational materials for healthcare professionals and handouts for patients. All IAC materials are free to distribute.
 
In case you missed them during recent weeks, these helpful materials were announced:

IAC’s Updated Materials for Clinicians

• Administering Vaccines: Dose, Route, Site, and Needle Size
• Don’t Be Guilty of These Preventable Errors in Vaccine Administration!
• Standing Orders for Administering Zoster Vaccine to Adults

Updated COVID-19 Web Pages

• Ask the Experts: COVID-19 web page
• Vaccines: COVID-19 web page
• Handouts: COVID-19 Vaccine web page

Related Links

• IAC’s Handouts gateway page to see educational materials sorted by category
• IAC's Ask the Experts gateway page to access more than 1,000 questions answered by IAC experts
• IAC's Clinic Tools gateway page and its nine subtopics
• IAC’s VISs and Translations gateway page
• IAC Educational Materials for Patients and Staff—an alphabetical listing of more than 300 ready-to-print staff educational materials and patient handouts

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Don’t let your colleagues be the last to know. Urge them to subscribe to IAC Express for free.

Dive into summer with hot-off-the-press, weekly immunization information at your fingertips! IAC Express, the free weekly e-newsletter produced by the Immunization Action Coalition (IAC), succinctly summarizes the week’s important immunization developments, including new and updated vaccine recommendations from CDC and the latest vaccine decisions by FDA. IAC Express also contains newly posted Vaccine Information Statements and their translations, and immunization education materials from IAC, CDC, AAP, and others. Subscribers learn about online and in-person educational opportunities, many offering free continuing education credit.



We appreciate you as a subscriber! Encourage your co-workers to subscribe to IAC Express so they get everything that matters to vaccinators in their own inbox.

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IAC experts called on by news media

Journalists seek out IAC experts to help explain vaccines to the public and policy makers. Our goal is to help the media understand and communicate the complex work vaccinators do. Here is a recent citation:

• CQ News: Booster Shots Would Add to Global Vaccination Challenge, Experts Say (7/2/21)

Related Link

• IAC in the News gateway page  

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Not-to-miss immunization articles in the news
 
These recent articles convey the potential risks of vaccine-preventable diseases and the importance of vaccination.

• USA Today: He Rejected the COVID-19 Vaccine and Almost Died. Now He's Preaching Its Virtues to Congress. (6/30/21)
• New York Times: Vaccinated and Confused? Answers about Masks, the Delta Variant and Breakthrough Infections (6/30/21)
• STAT: 12 Lessons COVID-19 Taught Us about Developing Vaccines during a Pandemic (6/30/21)
• CNN: Why These Parents Volunteered Their Young Children for COVID-19 Vaccine Trials (6/29/21)
• Science News: How COVID-19 Vaccines Were Made So Quickly without Cutting Corners (6/29/21)
• WebMD: Almost All U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Now in the Unvaccinated (6/28/21)
• CNBC: Vaccines Work against COVID––but Not Enough People Are Getting the Shots, U.S. Doctor Says (6/28/21)

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IAC Handouts

IAC recently revised its Notification of Vaccination Letter Template. Revisions include the addition of COVID-19, MenQuadfi, and Vaxelis vaccines and the removal of Zostavax.



Related Links

• IAC's Clinic Tools: Documenting Vaccinations gateway page
• IAC’s Handouts for Patients and Staff gateway page, where you can sort materials by topic, vaccine, or language
• IAC’s Educational Materials for Patients and Staff—an alphabetical listing of more than 300 ready-to-print staff educational materials and patient handouts

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IAC updates both the child and adult versions of 2-page reference table, “Guide to Contraindications and Precautions to Commonly Used Vaccines”

IAC recently revised Guide to Contraindications and Precautions to Commonly Used Vaccines as well as Guide to Contraindications and Precautions to Commonly Used Vaccines in Adults to highlight a link to find contraindications and precautions for COVID-19 vaccines and to remove references to zoster vaccine live (ZVL) from the table.

   

Related Links

• IAC's Handouts: Contraindications and Precautions gateway page
• IAC’s Handouts for Patients and Staff gateway page, where you can sort materials by topic, vaccine, or language
• IAC’s Educational Materials for Patients and Staff—an alphabetical listing of more than 300 ready-to-print staff educational materials and patient handouts

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Featured Resources

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United States Pharmacopeia releases updated version of its “COVID-19 Vaccine Handling Toolkit” with operational considerations for healthcare personnel 

In June, the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) released version 4.0 of its COVID-19 Vaccine Handling Toolkit. The revisions include:

• Extended storage time for undiluted, thawed Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine vials
• Considerations for maximizing doses withdrawn from larger-size Moderna vials
• Revised beyond-use date information (12 hours after vial puncture) for the Moderna vaccine

The toolkit also includes updated Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech guides to help safely and consistently maximize doses withdrawn from a vial and to address operational efficiency gaps in handling COVID-19 vaccines.

You can complete the form for immediate access to the toolkit and supporting resources.

Related Links

• USP website 
• USP's COVID-19 Vaccine Handling Toolkit web page

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NFID’s “Keep Up the Rates” campaign is expanding to address coadministration of COVID-19 vaccines with other vaccines, as well as health equity
 
The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID) launched a national campaign, Keep Up the Rates, to encourage all individuals to receive recommended vaccines that may have been delayed during the pandemic. The multimedia campaign engages national experts and leading public health organizations to reach populations most at risk of delaying vaccination or experiencing complications from vaccine-preventable diseases. 

The focus of the campaign is now expanding to address the coadministration of COVID-19 vaccines with other vaccines, as well as health equity and disparities in health outcomes.

Related Links

• NFID's Keep Up the Rates web page
• CDC's Interim Guidance for Routine and Influenza Immunization Services during the COVID-19 Pandemic gateway page

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Journal Articles and Newsletters

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“Safety of Vaccines Used for Routine Immunization in the United States: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis” published in Vaccine

In the June 23 issue, Vaccine published Safety of Vaccines Used for Routine Immunization in the United States: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. A portion of the abstract appears below. 
 
...Our objective was to conduct a systematic review of the safety of vaccines recommended for children, adults, and pregnant women in the United States....

...For children, SoE [strength of evidence] was high for no increased risk of autism following measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. SoE was high for increased risk of febrile seizures with MMR. There was no evidence of increased risk of intussusception with rotavirus vaccine at the latest follow-up (moderate SoE), nor of diabetes (high SoE). There was no evidence of increased risk or insufficient evidence for key adverse events for newer vaccines such as 9-valent human papillomavirus and meningococcal B vaccines. For adults, there was no evidence of increased risk (varied SoE) or insufficient evidence for key adverse events for the new adjuvanted inactivated influenza vaccine and recombinant adjuvanted zoster vaccine. We found no evidence of increased risk (varied SoE) for key adverse events among pregnant women following tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis vaccine, including stillbirth (moderate SoE).

...Across a large body of research we found few associations of vaccines and serious key adverse events; however, rare events are challenging to study. Any adverse events should be weighed against the protective benefits that vaccines provide.

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Journal retracts article over “distorted conclusions” about COVID-19 vaccine safety

On July 2, the editors of the journal Vaccines retracted an article published on June 24 titled “The Safety of COVID-19 Vaccinations—We Should Rethink the Policy.” A portion of the editors’ comments appear below.
 
...Serious concerns were brought to the attention of the publisher regarding misinterpretation of data, leading to incorrect and distorted conclusions.

The article was evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief with the support of several Editorial Board Members. They found that the article contained several errors that fundamentally affect the interpretation of the findings.

These include, but are not limited to:

The data from the Lareb report (https://www.lareb.nl/coronameldingen) in The Netherlands were used to calculate the number of severe and fatal side effects per 100,000 vaccinations. Unfortunately, in the manuscript by Harald Walach et al. these data were incorrectly interpreted which led to erroneous conclusions. The data was presented as being causally related to adverse events by the authors. This is inaccurate. In The Netherlands, healthcare professionals and patients are invited to report suspicions of adverse events that may be associated with vaccination. For this type of reporting a causal relation between the event and the vaccine is not needed, therefore a reported event that occurred after vaccination is not necessarily attributable to vaccination. Thus, reporting of a death following vaccination does not imply that this is a vaccine-related event. There are several other inaccuracies in the paper by Harald Walach et al. one of which is that fatal cases were certified by medical specialists. It should be known that even this false claim does not imply causation, which the authors imply. Further, the authors have called the events ‘effects’ and ‘reactions’ when this is not established, and until causality is established they are ‘events’ that may or may not be caused by exposure to a vaccine. It does not matter what statistics one may apply, this is incorrect and misleading.

The authors were asked to respond to the claims, but were not able to do so satisfactorily. The authors were notified of the retraction and did not agree.

Note that Vaccines is published by MDPI, based in Basel, Switzerland. This is a different publication than the journal Vaccine published by Elsevier, the multinational publishing house.

Related Links

• Vaccines: Retraction: Walach et al. The Safety of COVID-19 Vaccinations—We Should Rethink the Policy. Vaccines 2021;9:693
• Factcheck.org: Flawed Paper on COVID-19 Vaccines, Deaths Spreads Widely before Retraction
• Science: Scientists Quit Journal Board, Protesting ‘Grossly Irresponsible’ Study Claiming COVID-19 Vaccines Kill
• Retraction Watch: Journal Retracts Paper Claiming Two Deaths from COVID-19 Vaccination for Every Three Prevented

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Immunization PSAs from the Archive

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In this engaging 2009 PSA from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, families of all shapes and sizes can become unraveled from the flu

In this 2009 engaging public service announcement (PSA) from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, families of all shapes and sizes become unraveled when the flu strikes. This PSA is part of a collection curated by vaccine expert William L. Atkinson, MD, MPH, which spans a period of more than 50 years.

Previous PSAs featured in “From the Archives” are available when viewing this Vimeo video. 

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