Research Community Vaccinations Pediatrics
Despite some media narratives that focus on vaccine hesitancy becoming more commonplace, ACCORDS faculty members at the University of Colorado School of Medicine say the opposite is true. Most parents in the United States still support vaccinating their children.
Research Public Health Vaccinations Child & Adolescent
While most conversations about vaccinations concern the COVID-19 vaccine, Dr. Amy Feldman is focusing on vaccinations of a different kind. The standard kind.
A staggering number of pediatric transplant patients, one in six to be specific, are hospitalized within the first five years post-transplant with a potentially vaccine-preventable illness. Understanding this phenomenon and increasing standard vaccinations among pediatric transplant patients is the focus of Dr. Feldman’s research. She is currently in the third year of a five-year K08 Career Development Award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality entitled Improving Immunization Rates in Transplant Candidates Through the Use of a Health Information Technology Tool. Dr. Allison Kempe, director of ACCORDS, and Dr. Ronald Sokol, Chief of the Section of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, serve as her primary co-mentors.
Research Patient Care Public Health Vaccinations
The percentage of parents who refuse all vaccines for their children is small, roughly about 3%. There is, however, an increasing number of parents who refuse or want to defer individual vaccines or use an immunization schedule for their child that is not recommended. That’s according to Children’s Hospital Colorado’s primary care pediatrician and health services researcher Allison Kempe, MD, MPH, and pediatric infectious disease specialist Sean O’Leary, MD, MPH, who’ve been working on vaccine research related to hesitancy for over two decades.
Together with Children’s Colorado, the Anschutz Medical Campus, and a myriad of local, regional and national organizations, Drs. Kempe and O’Leary are using their research to educate parents and inform providers on how best to address a debate that, at least according to nearly everyone in the medical community, really shouldn’t exist — but does.
The New England Journal of Medicine
May 13, 2024
James Feinstein, MD, MPH, writes a tribute to his mentor, the late Steve Berman, MD.
Medscape
April 11, 2024
"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.
The New England Journal of Medicine
April 11, 2024
"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.
Denver 7
April 11, 2024
“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.”
Melissa Santorelli
