Published online January 3, 2008
PEDIATRICS Vol. 121 Supplement January 2008, pp. S1-S4 (doi:10.1542/peds.2007-1115A)
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SUPPLEMENT ARTICLE


Introduction: Strengthening the Delivery of New Vaccines for Adolescents

Mary M. McCauley, MTSC, Daniel B. Fishbein, MD and Jeanne M. Santoli, MD, MPH

National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia

Abbreviations: Td—tetanus and diphtheria toxoids

The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Before 2005, vaccination of adolescents typically focused on catching up with vaccines that they had not received by school age, most commonly, the second dose of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, the complete hepatitis B vaccine series, and a dose of varicella vaccine if needed. With the exception of the booster dose of tetanus and diphtheria toxoids (Td), recommended for administration at a health care visit at ages 11 to 12, adolescence was not considered a primary opportunity to deliver routinely recommended vaccines. The recommendation to administer Td at ages 11 to 12 was a prominent component of the 1996 joint recommendations for adolescent immunization by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Medical Association.1 The 1996 recommendations were intended, in part, to provide a rationale for a health care visit at ages 11 to 12, and this idea has evolved into the "adolescent vaccination platform," in which, similar to the childhood platform, immunizations draw parents and their children to routine preventive care visits at which other preventive care services can be delivered.

Nevertheless, although results vary, surveys of adolescents have found that many report not making a preventive health care visit in the last year.2 Moreover, according to a national survey of vaccination records in the home in 1997–2003, coverage with Td at ages 11 to 12 did not exceed 16% for any birth cohort studied. Coverage by ages 13 to 15 ranged from 29% to 35% over the study years (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unpublished data, 2005).

Beginning in 2005, 3 new vaccines that were licensed and recommended for adolescents renewed attention to the benefits of and barriers to an adolescent vaccination platform. In May 2005, recommendations were published . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Address correspondence to Mary M. McCauley, MTSC, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Rd, NE Mail Stop E-05, Atlanta, GA 30333. E-mail: mmccauley@cdc.gov