Health Promotion: The Importance of Vaccinations

Health promotion is a vital component to the healthy of a society, is a key component of Healthy People 2020, and is a major role of the nurse. Health promotion is achieved through education and preventive strategies. Vaccination is a health promotion activity in that its purpose is to prevent disease (Edelman & Mandle, 2010). Through vaccination, it is possible to significantly reduce the incidents of many diseases. Diseases that can be prevented through use of vaccinations are are referred to as vaccine preventable diseases. Some of the commonly vaccinated infections include polio, measles, Haemophilus Influenzae type b, pertussis, pneumococcal, rubella, varicella, hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus, and mumps (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2013).

“The Real Issues in Vaccine Safety”, written by Roberta Kwok, provides a discussion on the topic of vaccine safety. It provides information regarding real safety issues specific to vaccination and also mentions the false safety concerns that have been topic of public concern. It provides a discussion on how the false vaccine risks can make it difficult for the scientific community to evaluate actual risks. It mentions that vaccine manufactures are “victims of their own success” (Kwok, 2011) largely due to how safe vaccines have become. It does this by discussing the low risk rates for contracting the disease the vaccine is attempting to prevent and how few cases of contraction of disease cause public outcry. The article also discusses other potential side effects to vaccinations and the frequency of these side effects. It touches on the need for speed in identifying certain side effects so that their correlation to the administration of the vaccine can be ...

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...weigh the risks. But as disease recede from the public’s memory, the population’s tolerance for side effects with drop even further” (Kwok, 2011). This statement could not be made any better. Our generation has never had to look diseases like smallpox and polio in the face. Prevention of these diseases should be allowed to persist through the act of vaccination and this practice should begin in infancy.

References

Edelman, C. L., & Mandle, C. L. (2010). Health promotion throughout the lifespan. (7th ed.). St. Louis: Mosby Elsevier.

Kwok, R. (2011). Vaccines: The real issues in vaccine safety. Nature, 473(7348), 436-438. doi:10.1038/473436a

Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2013). What would happen if we stopped vaccinations?. Retrieved from website: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm