With sharp increases in preventable diseases like whooping cough in children over the last few years, public health officials are once again pushing for students to get vaccinated before the school year starts.
WHRO’s Yiqing Wang sat down with Dr. Nancy Welch, the health director at the Chesapeake Health Department, to talk about vaccine access, skepticism and the consequences of preventable diseases.
WHRO: Dr. Walsh, thanks for sitting down with us. Tell us — why is it so important for students to be vaccinated?
Nancy Welch: Because it's very effective in preventing disease. That's it in a nutshell. Now, it may take a few days for it to reach that maximum height of protection, but that protection is very high when you get the vaccines, and that's really what we want is to protect the public.
WHRO: You grew up in a time when many vaccines weren't yet available. How does that influence the way you promote vaccination?
NW: It's a drive to try to help people understand the diseases. I have friends who died as teenagers from meningococcal meningitis, friends who were paralyzed from polio. I've held hands with mothers as their child died from measles, pneumonia, sat with mothers as their child was coughing, coughing, coughing with pertussis and had pneumonia. So, I think sometimes we push the schedule because we see the data that shows how it prevents disease. But I have an additional reason for encouragement, because I've seen the deaths and because I've held the hands of mothers as their child died.
WHRO: Vaccine skepticism has grown in recent decades. What are some most common misconceptions you hear, and how do you respond to them?
NW: Well, of course, a common misconception, I think that leads to this, because people have not seen the disease: They're not comparing any risk of the vaccine with risk of death from the disease. And there is no comparison, I assure you.
As I said, no vaccine's 100%, you know. There may be tiredness, there may be headache, there may be soreness, so there can be, certainly, some of those kinds of complications from the vaccine, but they still work.
WHRO: So what are some specific steps that the VDH and the Chesapeake health department are taking to make vaccines more accessible?
NW: Well, certainly from the health department perspective, we hold vaccination clinics and they can come into the health department and get vaccines.
If they can't get them or can't make an appointment with a private physician, come to us, come to us. We have vaccination clinics all the time, and we do community events, and we do publicize that to try and make it available.
WHRO: And what should parents know about catching up if their child has missed some doses?
NW: They can come to the health department or any of the clinics and we have all the information that describes what shots they should have and when, based on what they've missed and timing in between. Now, they may have to have two or three shots at once to move things along quicker, because you can do that.
And we do recommend… some of these are not required, but this is the ages that you can get them. Like HPV is not required, but we strongly recommend it because it's certainly from seventh grade on that children become curious, and you don't want them to be exposed to something that could be a problem.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
