ACCORDS In the News

"The younger they are at the time of stroke, the more likely their stroke is due to a nontraditional risk factor," lead author Michelle Leppert, MD, said in a news release.

"Most parents in the United States don’t hesitate to have their children receive routine childhood vaccines. Suggesting otherwise is potentially harmful," says David M. Higgins, MD, MPH, and Sean O’Leary, MD, MPH.

“We are the leader in the country for pediatric living donor liver transplant," said Amy Feldman, MD. “Because we offer living donations, we're able to bring our waitlist times way down. So for children, the national average for a liver is to wait about eight months. Here at Children's Hospital Colorado, our average wait time is two months.”

David M. Higgins, MD, MPH, MS, Sean O'Leary, MD, MPH, and Joshua T.B. Williams, MD, discuss concerns with a declining vaccination rate and a return of measles in our state.

Larry Allen, MD, a cardiologist with the University of Colorado School of Medicine, has received $7 million in funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to investigate the use of electronic resources among heart failure patients.

"We have just been overwhelmed by the generosity of the Denver community,” said Dr. Amy Feldman, medical director of the liver transplant program at Children’s Hospital Colorado. "Hopefully, others will show the same generosity next year, since additional local children will get sick and kids in other parts of the country are still waiting for life-saving organs."

“The bad news is that it’s gone down since the pandemic and still hasn’t rebounded,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a University of Colorado pediatric infectious diseases specialist. “The good news is that the vast majority of parents are still vaccinating their kids according to the recommended schedule.”

Just 61% of adolescents are up to date on HPV vaccination, compared with greater than 90% for other childhood vaccines like those against measles and polio. “It’s a tragedy, because there are people who are going to get cancers that could have been prevented,” he says.

“To reduce mistrust, to improve culturally responsive care, I think we need to diversify the health care workforce," said Dr. Lilia Cervantes, a program leader and associate professor in the department of medicine at CU Anschutz.

Although 96% of public schools say they no longer strike students, nearly 70,000 students a year are struck “at least once by school personnel,” and corporal punishment is most widely used in the US South, the AAP statement said. “This isn’t acceptable — all children need to feel safe to learn,” said lead author Dr. Mandy Allison, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, Colorado.

According to Chris Knoepke, a Red Flag Law researcher who is also an assistant professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, “there’s no way to look back in time and see and be able to tell whether or not, you know, an ERPO or anything else would have prevented the tragedy that happened.” 

"For schools, consistent positive messages is key; so is having everyone [on staff] on the same page regarding the importance of childhood vaccines for keeping kids in school and protecting entire communities," says Sean O’Leary, professor of pediatrics-infectious diseases at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

The shot provides vaccine-like protection to healthy babies during a single winter respiratory virus season. But Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, said he expected logistical, educational and possible financial hurdles that could delay the drug’s rollout before this year’s winter respiratory virus season.

“Wow,” said Larry Allen, of the University of Colorado in Aurora, in discussing the results at an AHA press conference. “Such borderline results in medicine are common and can be challenging to implement. But I would suggest that the use of steroids based on the based on this study seems reasonable.”

A vaccine will be an important tool for this age group because vaccination has been shown "to provide more protection than natural infection," said ACCORDS Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice-chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"Anytime you are inhaling chemicals into your lungs and the nicotine the chemicals involved in the vape smoke itself you can get inflammation, have changes in the way the lungs or heart function and some of that can be rapid changes, says Dr. Heather De Keyser. "We've seen kids come into the hospital with severe lung disease immediately, but we've also had some concerns that this may lead to long-term changes."

This mandate for joint responsibility in care is upheld by Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which requires that hospitals have staff responsible for making accommodations for patients with disability. ACCORDS Megan Morris, PhD, MPH, CCC-SLP, associate professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine in CU’s Department of Medicine, has spent the greater part of three years facilitating a working group for these staff.

According to Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious disease, babies under 6 months tend to be at higher risk for respiratory illnesses, and children with preexisting conditions, such as chronic lung disease, may be more vulnerable than healthy children.

In the second segment of an interview with HCPLive during ACC 2022, Larry Allen, MD, medical director of heart failure at University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine, discussed his interest in some of the meeting’s key contributions to heart failure research.

In a story on the Colorado-based UCHealth website, co-author Tell Bennett, M.D., head of the Informatics and Data Science section in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said the paper was the first produced by the RECOVER study, which is recruiting patients nationwide to study long COVID.

Sean O’Leary, a professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, pointed out that even with two doses, Moderna’s vaccine appears to protect children from serious disease.

The work produced a paper, “Who has long-COVID? A big data approach,” that was recently peer-reviewed and accepted for publication by Lancet Digital Health, said co-author Dr. Tell Bennett, head of the Informatics and Data Science section in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The paper was also the first produced by the National Institutes of Health-funded RECOVER study, which is recruiting patients nationwide to study long COVID, Bennett said.

"It looks as if a third dose may be in the future for children 5 to 11 as well," said Dr. Sean O'Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and ACCORDS investigator.

“If providers were to give it to these children, they could lose their status as a vaccine provider,” ACCORDS Dr. Sean O’Leary, pediatric infectious diseases specialist and vice-chair of the AAP’s committee on infectious diseases, recently told the Guardian.

"The only significant change this year was to add the dengue vaccine to the schedule," ACCORDS Sean T. O'Leary, MD, MPH, vice-chair of the AAP's 2021–2022 Committee on Infectious Diseases and a co-author of the statement, told Medscape Medical News. "But that is really only relevant for children living in endemic areas, primarily Puerto Rico but some other smaller US territories as well."

“So much of it is not based on the science but really on politics and philosophy,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ infectious disease committee and a professor of pediatrics at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical School. “People are done, and they just want to move past COVID. It’s a little too early to declare victory.”

Will a third coronavirus shot for the youngest kids do the trick? A five-year-old gets the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in ...

Children 6 months to 2 years old who got shots were infected at a rate 50 percent lower than the placebo group. We know that the vaccine ...

"There is zero truth to this claim," ACCORDS' Dr. Sean O'Leary, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado's Anschutz Medical Campus, said in an email. "The claim has several features common to anti-vaccine mis- and disinformation." 

“What we’re seeing right now is still a lot of hospitalizations and unfortunately some deaths in this age group,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary of the University of Colorado, who is on the AAP’s infectious disease committee. If the FDA clears vaccinations for these youngsters, “that’s going to be really important because all of those hospitalizations and deaths essentially are preventable.”

"The FDA uses data submitted by the manufacturer. ACIP can use all kinds of other data to consider in their deliberations," Dr. Sean O'Leary, vice-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, told CNN on Tuesday.

Dr. Sean O'Leary joins a panel of experts to answer pandemic questions from parents. 

“The biggest risk factor at this point is being unvaccinated,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital Colorado.

"We're swimming in Covid right now," said ACCORDS Dr. Sean O’Leary, an infectious diseases physician at Children’s Hospital Colorado. At the same time, he said, there have been steady increases in flu cases, around 20 to 40 new cases over the past month.

"I think even just a couple of years ago, people felt that xenotransplantation for the heart and other organs was still a long way off. And it seems like it's started to move very quickly," ACCORDS Larry A. Allen, MD, MHS, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

“We do need a vaccine for these kids,” said ACCORDS Sean O’Leary, vice-chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics. However, a vaccine for children younger than 5 may not be available in time “to change this current wave” of infections caused by the omicron variant, which many experts say may be nearing its peak.

“We do need a vaccine for these kids,” said ACCORDS Sean O’Leary, vice-chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics. However, a vaccine for children younger than 5 may not be available in time “to change this current wave” of infections caused by the omicron variant, which many experts say may be nearing its peak.

Vaccination rates have dropped across the country and worldwide, giving viruses more potential hosts and chances to spread, said Dr. Sean O’Leary, ACCORDS investigator and an infectious disease pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Colorado. While diseases like measles no longer circulate in the United States under normal circumstances, they’re more common in other parts of the world, and unvaccinated travelers could bring them back, he said.

As families weigh how best to protect their young children and keep older loved ones safe, here are four things for parents to know, according to Boogaard and Dr. Sean O'Leary, a pediatrician and vice-chair of the AAP's Committee on Infectious Diseases.

ACCORDS Dr. Sean O'Leary, a professor of pediatric infectious disease at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who works with Children's Hospital Colorado, said his fellow pediatricians are starting to hear from more parents, "particularly for the older kids who were vaccinated several months ago."

As USA TODAY has previously reported, VAERS reports are unverified and cannot be used to determine whether an adverse event was caused by a vaccine. Dr. Sean O'Leary, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado's Anschutz Medical Campus, said anti-vaccine activists frequently use the database to spread misinformation.

Sean O’Leary said the delta variant is so contagious that “pretty much any age group is at risk of getting it and spreading it, including kids under 5.” Parents must now also grapple with the omicron variant. Scientists are worried that mutations could make omicron more transmissible, but there is too little research so far to draw any conclusions.

Sean O'Leary said that children have accounted for a greater proportion of overall Covid-19 cases in the United States since vaccines have become widely available for adults. Between Nov. 11 and Nov. 18, pediatric cases made up around a quarter of all Covid-19 cases in the country.
"Is there cause for concern? Absolutely,” O'Leary said. "What's driving the increase in kids is there is an increase in cases overall."

Article written by Dr. Sean O'Leary, American Academy of Pediatrics. 

These cases accounted for about a quarter of the country’s caseload for the week, the statement said. Children under 18 make up about 22 percent of the U.S. population. “Is there cause for concern? Absolutely,” Dr. Sean O’Leary, the vice chair of the academy’s infectious diseases committee, said in an interview on Monday night. “What’s driving the increase in kids is there is an increase in cases overall.”

Coronavirus cases are surging among children in the U.S. From Nov. 11 to Nov. 18, the American Academy of Pediatrics counted more than 140,000 cases among children, and new infections are up by 32 percent over the last two weeks. “Is there cause for concern? Absolutely,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, the vice chair of the academy’s infectious diseases committee. “What’s driving the increase in kids is there is an increase in cases overall.”

“We’re still not back to where we need to be,” said ACCORDS Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious-disease doctor at Children’s Hospital Colorado and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

“We’re still not back to where we need to be,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease doctor at Children’s Hospital Colorado and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

While "interesting," the "subgroups with 'significant benefit' don't necessarily make sense," said late-breaking clinical trial session discussant Larry Allen, MD, MHS, of the University of Colorado in Aurora.

Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice chair of the committee on infectious diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said he has seen a lot of joy and enthusiasm in clinics, "with parents who are so relieved to get their kids vaccinated."

The analysis, published last week in the Lancet, suggests the U.K. has notched a major public health victory against cancer through vaccinating the vast majority of young women against HPV, said Allison Kempe, a pediatrics professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who did not work on the study.

An opinion piece written by Sean O'Leary and Yvonne Maldonado. 

“What I’ve observed in the last 18 months with the development, approval, and distribution of these amazing, safe, effective vaccines is nothing short of miraculous. We were hoping for vaccines that were 50% effective, and we got vaccines that were more than 90% effective at preventing infection, and even better at preventing hospitalization and death. In a short period of time, communities have come together to somehow get vaccines into the arms of over 77% of eligible Coloradans, saving thousands of lives. This is remarkable, but we’re not done yet – we need to finish that last mile to protect ourselves, our communities, and our children,” ACCORDS Dr. Sean O’Leary said.

“In all age groups, the benefits still very much outweigh the potential risks,” said ACCORDS Dr. Sean O’Leary, the vice chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious diseases, who was not involved with the research. He said that the study was “very nicely done” and that it would add to the understanding of the true risk of myocarditis after vaccinations, particularly for younger men.

Because it’s so hard to distinguish one virus from another in a home setting, “what we’re recommending is that anybody with these symptoms be tested for COVID,” says ACCORDS Sean O’Leary, MD, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and an infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital Colorado. Some schools even require it.

“Schools simply reflect what’s going on in the surrounding community and, in most cases, you have less transmission than in the surrounding community because of mitigation measures in place,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatrics professor at the University of Colorado.

“As far as we know, it’s not because people are refusing vaccines. It’s simply because they were not visiting the doctor to the same degree,” Dr. Sean O’Leary, who serves as vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatric’s Committee on Infectious Diseases, is a pediatric infectious diseases professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and a primary investigator at ACCORDS, told HuffPost.

While children remain at lower risk, close to 500 have died from COVID-19, putting it in the top-10 causes of pediatric deaths, said Sean O'Leary, vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' infectious diseases committee and primary investigator at ACCORDS.

Infectious disease doctor Sean O’Leary, with Children’s Hospital Colorado, and a primary investigator with ACCORDS, agrees your level of risk depends on what events you’re looking to attend and your personal circumstances. When it comes to children under 12, who can’t yet get vaccinated, the risk to them of severe disease, hospitalization or death is lower than older adults. 

Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious diseases, said while the question of whether the virus is more severe for children is important, it is “not as important as how many children, frankly, right now are getting infected and getting hospitalized.”

Impatient parents who are seeking off-label adult shots for their children concern officials like Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice chairman of the committee on infectious diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“The Medication Regimen Complexity Index (MRCI) is a validated tool that assesses medication regimen complexity in adult and geriatric populations with polypharmacy, and it has the potential to be extrapolated to the pediatric population,” James A. Feinstein, MD, MPH,of the Adult and Child Consortium for Health Outcomes Research and Delivery Science (ACCORDS) at the University of Colorado and Children’s Hospital Colorado, and colleagues wrote in JAMA Network Open.

Your blog post content herThe social channels of the Resurrection patient show a strong attachment to the QAnon conspiracy theory and a disdain for masking, vaccines and other mainstream approaches to avoiding COVID-19. Laura Scherer, a researcher at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, said such distrust for medical authority is nothing new.e…

Dr. Sean O'Leary, an infectious-disease physician at Children's Hospital Colorado, told NBC News in July that there wasn't a clear-cut explanation as to why these respiratory ailments were spreading in the summer but said one reason could be the loosening of social-distancing guidelines and mask-wearing.

This is to be expected, said Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice chair of the American Association of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases. “This is a reflection of both the infectiousness of the Delta variants and what happens to unvaccinated populations as infections continue,” he told CNN.

About half of 16- to 17-year-olds have gotten at least one dose of vaccine, Sean O'Leary, MD, a professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at the University of Colorado's School of Medicine, told CNN.

There could be some biological mechanisms behind why older teens appear to have Covid-19 case rates higher than other children -- but that's not really clear, said Dr. Sean O'Leary, professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at University of Colorado's School of Medicine and ACCORDS.

In early August, the smoke got so bad that many Denverites couldn’t even see the 14,000-foot peaks of the Rocky Mountains, normally visible from most of the city. “It was a really, really rough weekend for anyone with lungs,” said Heather De Keyser, a pediatric pulmonologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado.

“The delta variant really put some urgency on this as we enter the school year,” said Sean O’Leary, vice chairman of the academy’s Committee on Infectious Diseases who practices at Children’s Hospital Colorado. “Cases are rising everywhere and it’s all over the map what school districts are doing regarding masks.”

“Right now there doesn’t seem a reason to need a booster,” said Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Colorado. “There are legitimate concerns about the motivations about Pfizer’s statement, given it’s in their financial interest to promote this concept. That doesn’t mean to say they’re wrong, but we need to follow the science.”

“It didn’t seem from early on that these trials in kids were happening with the same urgency that they were with adults,” says Sean O’Leary, a professor at the University of Colorado and vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatricians Committee on Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Maya Bunik, the medical director of the Child Health Clinic, part of the Children’s Hospital system, gives an example of two kids who lost their mother to COVID-19 back in March; their grandmother is now taking care of them.

“I know there’s a lot of anxiety out there, but it really doesn’t justify going outside the lines,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, an infectious diseases specialist at Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora. “The No. 1 issue with any vaccine is safety for the patient.”

As cases start to rise around the country and Colorado as well, families have “more questions and more anxiety,” said Dr. Jessica Cataldi, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist with Children’s Hospital Colorado. “The heart of it is really how to keep their kids safe.” She urged parents to advise their children to wear masks in crowded indoor spaces, like schools, even if their school district doesn’t require it. 

One thing is clear: “It is certainly more transmissible,” said ACCORDS Sean O’Leary, vice chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics. For comparison, the alpha variant, which was the most predominant in the United States before this one, was estimated to be 50 percent more transmissible than the original coronavirus.

The Delta variant is more transmissible than the version of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) that circulated for much of the previous 16 months or so, which means that it could spread faster in schools, just like it does anywhere else. Though it doesn’t seem to cause more severe illness (in either children or adults), Dr. Sean O’Leary, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, says he’s concerned that kids could carry the virus back home to vulnerable family members, or in the other direction, putting teachers and staffers at risk. “I think it has the potential to be bad,” he says.

"That is absolutely a concern as we move into this coming school year that we have this more contagious variant, and this is a group of individuals who won't be eligible for vaccination yet," said Dr. Sean O'Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus and vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases.

“Whenever a baby this young develops a fever, parents should call their pediatrician to have their baby evaluated,” Sean O’Leary, MD, MPH, FAAP, co-author of the guidance, said in the news release. “Most children do well, but some have serious infections, and at such a young age, it’s next to impossible for a parent to distinguish who has a serious infection and who doesn’t.”

“The more people we can vaccinate, including children and adults, the less circulation of COVID we are going to see,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, Pediatric Infectious Disease Specialist with Children’s Hospital Colorado. “We’ve got a really contagious virus that is circulating out there.”

Dr. Sean O'Leary, vice chair of the committee on infectious diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said “it is more contagious in kids just like it's more contagious in other unvaccinated individuals, but it's not more contagious in kids than other unvaccinated individuals.”

“it's going to hit the people that are most vulnerable, which are the people that haven't been vaccinated,” Sean O'Leary, vice chair of the AAP's Committee on Infectious Diseases told NPR. 

Dr. Sean O'Leary, an infectious diseases physician at Children's Hospital Colorado, said he is seeing a "big uptick" in RSV cases. Other viruses, normally seen in the winter, are also landing children in the hospital this summer, including enteroviruses and parainfluenza 3, which causes croup. "We're seeing cases of bronchiolitis, which is what RSV usually causes, but we're seeing it with the other viruses," O'Leary said.

Dr. Sean O'Leary, an infectious diseases physician at Children's Hospital Colorado, said he is seeing a "big uptick" in RSV cases.

For parents who still have lingering questions, we enlisted pediatrician and infectious disease expert Dr. Sean O’Leary, director of the Colorado Pediatric Practice-Based Research Network and vice-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases, to discuss the risks and benefits of COVID-19 vaccination in greater depth.

“Most of these infants never get a fever, but when one does it can be pretty scary,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a coauthor of the guidelines, vice chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics, and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus. 

“Right now there doesn’t seem a reason to need a booster,” said Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Colorado. 

Studies for both of these vaccines are starting to look at how effective and safe they are in children, but it will take several more months before researchers know more about how they perform in people as young as 12, said Dr. Jessica Cataldi, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Colorado [and assistant professor of pediatrics at CU School of Medicine] who specializes in infectious diseases. “We want to make sure that the vaccines are safe for kids because kids do have different immune systems,” she said.

Sean O'Leary, MD, said that in general, parents who are highly motivated to vaccinate themselves are going to vaccinate their children when they're eligible.

Aside from protecting children against covid-19 — the disease caused by the coronavirus — the vaccine “gives them a ticket to doing a lot of things they weren’t doing before, like hanging out indoors with friends without masks,” infectious-disease expert Sean O’Leary said.

Dr. Sean O’Leary told me that families that include both kids under 12 and people who can’t be vaccinated or are at high risk for severe COVID-19 might want to be extra mindful of their kids’ exposure, because they could pass it to someone who’s not protected.

Eventually, perhaps next year, K-12 mandates might be called for, said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Colorado.

Experts say we all should expect things to feel easier this year than they did last year, but they still won’t be what most people would consider normal. “My best guess is that it’ll be better than last summer in terms of what we’re doing, but it won’t be back to what it was like in summer 2019,” says Sean O’Leary, MD, MPH, professor of pediatrics and a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Children’s Hospital Colorado.

In an accompanying commentary, Sean O'Leary, MD, MPH, of the University of Colorado in Aurora, and Yvonne Maldonado, MD, of Stanford University, wrote that while the authors "are quick to point out that a causal relationship between vaccination and myocarditis has not been established, the temporal association of these cases with vaccination as well as the striking similarity in the clinical and laboratory presentations raise the possibility for such a relationship."

A commentary published last week in the medical journal Pediatrics reviewed a published account of seven cases of myocarditis in teen males following Covid-19 vaccination. The authors concluded that "there are some concerns regarding this case series that might suggest a causal relationship" between the vaccine and myocarditis. "There are some suggestions [the link] may be real, but it's not definitive yet," Dr. Sean O'Leary, a co-author of the commentary, told CNN.

"The good news is, cases continue to fall across the board," said Dr. Sean O'Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children's Hospital Colorado and member of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

While the question about the importance of vaccines for little kids is still theoretical, it's still an important one to answer, said Dr. Sean O'Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children's Hospital Colorado.

 So first and foremost, shout out to Dan. Dan the man, and what a study Decide if LVAD. If you have time, if you're interested in how patients think for any condition, you need to go read that study and that trial. It's amazing. [referencing a podcast with Dr. Dan Matlock in 2018]

We spoke with Dr. Sean O'Leary, a pediatric infectious disease expert, about where we're at with distributing shots to kids, reasons for them to get inoculated, and the best resources for understanding vaccine efficacy.

“Having adolescents vaccinated against the virus is really going to limit spread in school to a great degree,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. “It potentially could even change mask requirements for school, depending on the level of vaccination uptake. I’m looking forward to a much different school year next year, primarily because of vaccination.”

This is one more study showing that masking, among other mitigation efforts, "can reduce infections and ultimately save lives," said Dr. Sean O'Leary.

"... for the people who do [have breakthrough cases], their cases are generally mild and they tend to be less likely to spread the infection to others,” said Dr. Sean O'Leary.

By any of the measures that we’re following here in the United States, those numbers are quite a bit higher,” said Dr. Sean O'Leary.

Sean O'Leary, MD, vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics  Committee on Infectious Diseases, told Medscape Medical News that reporting methods differ by state and there is much variation in how COVID-19 infection is classified in hospitals.

“Those numbers are surprising. That’s a lot higher than what we’re seeing in the United States,” stated Dr. Sean O’Leary.

Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Colorado and vice president of the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said some people wonder why children should get vaccinated, if they’re at lower risk. There are a lot of reasons, he said, from keeping community transmission low to returning to regular social activities and avoiding quarantine.

Vaccine trials are currently underway for children younger than 12, but none have been approved yet, said Dr. Sean O’Leary.

CBS4’s Mekialaya White interview with University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus Professor of Pediatrics Dr. Sean O’Leary for answers...“As a pediatrician (at Children’s Hospital), it’s not uncommon for me to talk with families about concerns they have. It’s important to explore where those concerns are coming from. We’re hearing a lot from parents about misinformation, things that they’ve heard from someone else, on the internet or somewhere else,” cautioned O’Leary. “Be careful about your sources of information.”

"The more transparency we can have in this entire process, the better off we are in terms of trust," said Dr. Sean O'Leary, vice chair of the committee on infectious diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"It's not correct to say that it is benign, that it's a benign illness in children. There have been tens of thousands of hospitalizations in the United States, roughly about 600 deaths in children. It's actually in the top ten causes of death for children now," said Dr. Sean O'Leary, in a recent interview.

A VAERS submission does not mean that the vaccine is responsible for any of the events reported. “For example, if you get a vaccine and then you get struck by lightning, you can report that to VAERS,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary.

Dr. Sean O’Leary predicted that just as adults had swarmed Covid vaccine providers during the initial weeks of distribution, parents and pent-up young teenagers would rush for it at the start, too.

Dr. Sean O'Leary said highly transmissible variants, the lack of vaccine for kids and loosened COVID-19 restrictions are contributing to the numbers.

"I hear all the time from parents who are interested in getting their kids into studies, or they call and ask when these vaccines are going to be available down to age 12, so there is a lot of pent up demand," said Dr. Sean O'Leary.

"We're coming into the summertime when many adolescents come into the office to get their routine vaccines. And so if we missed those then, we may not be able to catch them up in the near future," says Dr. Sean O'Leary.

ACCORDS investigator, Dr. Sean O'Leary, and the vice chair of the AAP's Committee on Infectious Diseases and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Medical Campus and Children's Hospital Colorado, was recently interviewed by NPR about what's behind the rising proportion of cases in children.

"So far, the hospital and school districts have essentially donated the staff time needed to coordinate kids’ asthma care, because they typically can’t bill insurance, said ACCORDS Investigator Dr. Stanley Szefler, and director of the pediatric asthma research program at the hospital’s Breathing Institute.

Addiction specialists hailed the move, including Dr. Donald E. Nease, Jr. with the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He thinks this is a great step toward acceptance of medications that help in addiction treatment.

Pediatric infectious disease specialist Dr. Sean O’Leary of Children’s Colorado said he believes that while transmission can happen at school, community spread is a bigger factor.

But infections in children are still a concern, said Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice chair of the committee on infectious diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics. “We all know that it’s more severe in older adults, but it’s absolutely not correct to say that it’s benign in other people, and that’s true for kids, too,” he said of the coronavirus.

"Childhood cases really reflect what's going on in the surrounding community," said Dr. Sean O'Leary.

Dr. Sean O’Leary, who is the vice-chairperson of the Pediatrics’ Academy’s Infectious Disease Committee, has said that inflammatory condition makes kids very ill quite faster. However, most of them respond to the treatment quite well and get better completely.

“My best guess is that it’ll be better than last summer in terms of what we’re doing, but it won’t be back to what it was like in summer 2019,” says Dr. Sean O’Leary.

Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatrics professor at the University of Colorado, said vaccination will help children avoid hospitalizations, a rare inflammatory reaction or lasting symptoms known as long COVID.

The side effects reported by the CDC and FDA Tuesday morning are very rare and the vast majority of people who get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine won’t experience them, said Dr. Sean O’Leary.

Dr. Larry Allen, an advanced heart failure and transplant cardiologist with UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, said they saw a 40% decrease in heart patients at the peak of the pandemic.

“These are two of the potentially really lifesaving vaccines for the world. The AstraZeneca in particular, because it's so cheap, it's so relatively easy to manufacture, and I think 3 billion doses are slated for the rest of the world and has the potential to save a ton of lives,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children's Hospital Colorado.

Sean O’Leary, the vice chairman of the infectious diseases committee for the AAP, tells the Associated Press that most children “respond very well to treatment and the vast majority get completely better.”

Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice chairman of the pediatrics academy's infectious diseases committee, said the inflammatory condition typically causes children to become very sick very quickly, but that most ‘’respond very well to treatment and the vast majority get completely better.’’

“I would agree completely,” said Dr. Sean O'Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children's Hospital Colorado. “Vaccines work.”.

A recent study, by Laura Scherer, PhD, and colleagues Allison Kempe, MD, MPH, Larry Allen, MD, MSH, Christopher Knoepke, PhD, MSW, LCSW, Channing Tate, PhD(c), MPH, and Dan Matlock, MD, MPH, sheds light on the psychosocial attributes of people who fall victim to health misinformation on social media. The findings, published in the journal Health Psychology, suggest that these individuals are more likely to have lower education, reduced health literacy, a distrust in the health care system, and belief in alternative medicine.

"It's not correct to say that COVID-19 is completely benign in children," said Dr. Sean O'Leary.

"We know kids are not as affected, but it's inaccurate to say it's a benign condition in kids," says Dr. Sean O'Leary.

Such questions can be “really tough and almost unanswerable,” because they often require families not just to assess their individual risk tolerance but also predict the future, said Dr. Sean O’Leary.

ACCORDS Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice chair of the committee on infectious diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics, said, “It’s an evolving situation. By summer, the CDC may loosen its guidance.” 

While it’s true that most children rarely get very sick from COVID-19 — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that COVID-19 hospitalization rates are 80 times higher among adults older than 85 than they are among children between the ages of 5 to 17 — many parents won’t (and shouldn’t) feel comfortable returning to life as normal until their children are fully vaccinated, too, says Sean O’Leary, M.D., M.P.H.

"To me, having those kids in school with the mitigation measures in place is really, to me, it's almost a no brainer," said ACCORDS Dr. Sean O'Leary of the University of Colorado.

“[Vaccine refusal] has been across the political spectrum,” says ACCORDS Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist who studies vaccine attitudes. “Those tend to be the extreme ends of both parties.”

That doesn’t mean all travel has to be forbidden, said ACCORDS' Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Children’s Hospital Colorado.

Podcast Interview. Today’s guests include: ACCORDS' Dr. Maya Bunik and Erica Wymore with Children’s Hospital Colorado and CU School of Medicine.

That doesn’t mean all travel has to be forbidden, said ACCORDS' Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Children’s Hospital Colorado. “It’s really a personal decision, and depends on lots of different factors. Does the child have underlying health issues that may put them at higher risk?”

Sometimes children have more robust immune responses to a vaccine than adults, which could require different dose levels, said ACCORDS' Dr. Sean O’Leary, professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Children’s Hospital Colorado.

“Vaccines are a victim of their own success because they work, and so parents don’t see these diseases anymore that historically killed thousands or millions of children and, in some cases, adults as well,” says Dr. Sean O’Leary.

“It makes sense,” said ACCORDS' Dr. Sean O'Leary, vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee on Infectious Diseases. “We don't have any hard data saying that's what's happening, but it makes sense that we may see some shifting demographics” as a result of mass immunizations, he said. “We know the vaccine works.” 

ACCORDS Dr. Jessica Cataldi wrote an editorial published with the study March 12 in Pediatrics. She agreed it’s important to understand the economic fallout of measles outbreaks. “It really does reflect the shared impact in the community,” said Cataldi, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital Colorado and University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

THC in breast milk may have serious consequences for infants, Dr. Maya Bunik, part of ACCORDS in the School of Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz.

“We are very excited to spend time one by one, reaching out to our patients and we are using any means possible,” said Dr. Hillary Lum, a geriatrician at the clinic and part of ACCORDS.

Lead study author, and part of ACCORDS, Laura D. Scherer, Ph.D., with the University of Colorado School of Medicine, explains the implications of these findings.

"It simply reflects the growing epidemiology. We saw a huge surge in cases here in the U.S. in October, November, December, January, and so at the same time, we also saw a lot more cases of MIS-C," said Dr. Sean O'Leary, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at the hospital and is vice chair on the committee on infectious diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

ACCORDS Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, discusses the latest science on COVID-19 in schools as many students begin to head back to the classroom in coming weeks.

'Inaccurate information is a barrier to good health care because it can discourage people from taking preventive measures to head off illness and make them hesitant to seek care when they get sick,' said lead author Dr. Laura Scherer from ACCORDS at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics has been "really advocating to try and make these trials happen with the same urgency that they happen for adults," said Dr. Sean O'Leary, the vice chair of the organization's committee on infectious diseases.

Although relatively few children die of covid-19, “it's not fair to say it's a benign disease among children,” said Dr. Sean O'Leary.

The researchers also found persistent HPV infection in about 15% of the children during six years of follow-up, noted Dr. Sean O'Leary, vice chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' (AAP) Committee on Infectious Diseases.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has been “really advocating to try and make these trials happen with the same urgency that they happen for adults,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, who is vice chair of its committee on infectious diseases.

“You need to have that accessible environment, and then also address the provider’s biases, assumptions, knowledge, and how that might be influencing the care they’re providing,” said Dr. Megan Morris, who is also the director of the Learning Collaborative to Address Disability Equity in Healthcare. The equipment alone, she said, is not enough.

A team, led by Jessica R. Cataldi, MD, MSCS, Adult and Child Consortium for Health Outcomes Research and Delivery Science, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Children’s Hospital Colorado, examined family physicians’ and general internal medicine physicians’ perceptions, knowledge, and practices for use of the 2 influenzas types during the 2016-2017 and 2018-2019 influenza seasons.

Dr. Sean O’Leary wrote to Lead Stories, noting "There is zero evidence that masks can cause bacterial lung infections, and very little biologic plausibility..."

A new study from Germany offers yet more data to show that childcare facilities and elementary schools should remain open or re-open to full-time, in-person learning as quickly as possible, according to an accompanying editorial by Children’s Colorado infectious disease specialist Sean O’Leary, MD, MPH. The study findings and editorial were published in the Jan. 22 edition of JAMA Pediatrics, a highly respected publication from the American Medical Association focused on child and adolescent health. 

Data on wasted doses is routinely monitored in childhood immunizations in large part because it is required by the federal Vaccines For Children program, which provides inoculations to millions of children not covered by private health insurance, said Dr. Sean O’Leary.

“In my experience, everyone that is delivering health care now is being incredibly careful with infection control,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, the vice chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious diseases. “The risk of going into a health care facility is probably pretty low relative to a lot of the other things people are currently engaging in in the U.S.”

According to Dr. Amy Feldman, MD MSCS with Children’s Hospital Colorado sadly one in ten babies and one in 20 children die before they can get a suitable liver.

According to the reports by AP, Dr. Sean O’Leary said that with other respiratory viruses, “young children are the germ factories. In this case, it’s different and we don’t really know why.”

The University of Colorado awarded approximately $1.4 billion in federal, state, international and foundational research funding to its campuses during the 2019-2020 fiscal years, the fourth consecutive year in which grants exceeded $1 billion.

Parental concerns about vaccines appear to be increasing, states JAMA study co-author, Dr. Allison Kempe.

"The fact that one in eight parents are still concerned about vaccine safety for both childhood and influenza vaccinations is discouraging,” said lead author Dr. Allison Kempe, director of ACCORDS and professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Dr. Dan Matlock explains why it is important to document what you want for end-of-life medical care.