Adults need vaccinations, too

Here are three steps we can take to make sure they get them

Fort Logan, Colo., circa 1956. My father is headed into the store to buy our first black-andwhite television, but I’m too ill and hallucinating to leave the car. Back at home with a fever of 105 degrees, my mother, a physician, takes one look at me and immediately pronounces: “Measles!”

Six decades later — except for outbreaks in under vaccinated communities — that’s a pretty rare diagnosis. Childhood vaccinations were one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century, all but eliminating diseases like polio and smallpox in the United States.

Unfortunately, it’s a different story among adults, for whom immunization rates for a wide range of recommended vaccines are far too low. As a result, more than 50,000 adults in the United States die each year, and thousands more suffer serious health problems, from diseases that vaccines can prevent.

Take the flu, for example. Fewer than half of Americans receive the flu vaccine each year. As a result, between 5 percent and 20 percent of Americans get the flu annually. That seemingly small percentage has big consequences: annually, between 12,000 and 56,000 deaths, more than $10 billion in direct medical expenses and more than $87 billion in total costs.

As a family physician and educator, I’ve seen firsthand how damaging lack of access to vaccines can be. Early in my career, I treated toddlers with meningitis, diagnosed teenagers with rubella and cared for adults with polio — all of which are vaccinepreventable.

Contrast that with today, where the family medicine residents seeing patients in our Pittsburgh family health centers instead spend their time explaining and administering new, improved vaccines for children, adolescents and adults. For a decade, I’ve sponsored an annual health promotion project to highlight the benefits of vaccinations.

If there’s one thing my experience has taught me, it’s that we need a collective national response to ensure that vaccines — truly life-changing and lifesaving medicines — remain accessible and affordable to all. Groups such as the Adult Vaccine Access Coalition — a diverse community of health care providers, vaccine innovators, pharmacies, public health organizations and patient and consumer groups — are working to raise awareness, improve access and increase utilization of vaccines among adults. We should all follow their lead.

Here are three ways we can do that.

First, recommended vaccines should continue to be covered under all public and private health care insurance plans. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, millions of additional Americans received access to vaccine coverage with no out- of- pocket cost. That’s important — evidence shows that the more patients must pay for vaccines, the less likely it is that they’ll get them. Let’s expand, not reduce, the number of people who can get vaccines at no personal cost.

Second, we must maintain federal funding for immunization programs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides significant funding to state and local health departments to purchase vaccines, implement campaigns to increase immunization coverage, track coverage rates and gaps, and respond to vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks. Cutting that funding just isn’t worth it — lives will be lost, and all the additional medical care costs will dwarf any “savings” we get from shortsighted cuts to critical vaccination programs.

Finally, with our senior citizen population booming, let’s make sure that Medicare beneficiaries get their recommended vaccines. Every Medicare patient gets a free annual checkup. This is the perfect time for providers and patients to discuss vaccines. Our experience has documented that there’s a direct connection between a physician recommending a vaccine and a patient ultimately getting one.

By taking these three simple steps, policy makers, providers and patients can work together to ensure that all adults get the vaccines they need.

Remember: The best way to stay healthy is to not get sick in the first place.