Essay On Mandatory Vaccination Of Children

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Public health policy is the intertwining of health and policy which impacts the general population (Porche, 2012). The legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government can make administrative decisions that can impact the actions, behaviors, or resources in a community. The impact of the administrative decisions can affect the health of a population (Porche, 2012). If the overall health of a population is poor then the effect is not only felt by the people themselves but can also impact the government (Ungvarsky, 2017). Therefore, the health of citizens is important to government entities. Most governments have set up public health policies to maintain and improve public health. A controversial public health policy is the mandatory vaccination of children. This paper will provide an analysis of this ethical issue, along with evaluating the ethical dimensions of mandatory vaccination. Lastly, justification will be provided for the importance of this public …show more content…

Utility is the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Paternalism occurs when a person’s rights are restricted for the sake of the public’s health. Mandating vaccination of children allows for a greater number of people to be vaccinated which helps with herd immunity. Herd immunity is essential for infants, the immunocompromised, and for those people whose immune system does not respond to vaccination. As discussed earlier in this paper, some vaccines have a fragile threshold and require a larger number in the population to be vaccinated to prevent outbreaks. A detrimental effect can occur when a person does not consider the common good of the community by vaccinating. This detrimental effect will have an impact on the overall well-being of the community, each individual’s well-being, as well as the individual’s well-being that chose not to vaccinate (Hendrix et al.,

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