1) Frontline: Vaccines have been touted as one of the most successful advances of modern medicine, yet an increasing number of parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children because of possible side effects. In this video chapter from The Vaccine War, you will examine the debate among public health officials, doctors and parents around vaccine safety and hear differing perspectives on the benefits and risks of vaccination. At the end of the 10:11 minute video clip, post your opinion on whether you are “pro” or “con” vaccination and support your opinion with a scientific resource(s).
2)Step 1 – Go into site http://www.healthypeople.gov
Step 2 – Search "health disparities"
Step 3 – Link into some of the major headings under health disparities
Step 4 – Review documents
Step 5 – Provide discussion with your answer to the question “What plan for health disparities is occurring now and in your opinion, what does the future look like in regards to health disparities?" ”
Classmates responses below:
1) The Vaccine War
After watching the video Vaccine War, I feel children should be vaccinated for all vaccines that are recommended by health professionals. In today’s world, many more diseases and viruses are contractible more than ever. I do agree with Doctor Bradshaw that with international travel children are more vulnerable to catch a sickness/disease or virus,especially somewhere like Ashland, Oregon. People come from all over the world to see the Shakespeare Festival, which highers the rate of children getting sick with individuals coming from all over the world. The CDC even explains their thoughts on children obtaining a disease from travelers coming from other countries. “ Like any medication, vaccines can cause side effects. The most common side effects are mild. On the other hand, many vaccine-preventable disease symptoms can be serious, or even deadly. Even though many of these diseases are rare in this country, they still occur around the world. Unvaccinated U.S. citizens who travel abroad can bring these diseases to the U.S.,putting unvaccinated children at risk. (CDC, 2019). I understand that some parents don't understand why so many vaccines are recommended when they were growing up, but unfortunately, in today’s world they are more at risk to become sick.
The article, Making The Vaccine Decision, the CDC explains why vaccines are so important. “As a parent, you may get upset or concerned when you watch your baby get 3 or 4 shots during a doctor’s visit. But, all of those shots add up to protection for your baby against 14 infectious diseases. Young babies can get very ill from vaccine-preventable diseases.” (CDC, 2019). I agree with the CDC that although it seems like many vaccines are given to babies, this will prevent your baby and child from obtaining a sickness that could be avoided. The CDC also explains that although your baby/child many get several vaccines in one day, the amount of antigens that are in a vaccine, is not enough to overload the immune system. Your baby/child's body is fighting off antigens daily and only small amounts of antigens are released when receiving the vaccine. The United States also has the safest vaccine supply in the world according to the CDC.
In my opinion, I would be “Pro” for vaccinations. I believe that babies/children should be vaccinated to prevent sickness, that in some cases can even be fatal.
2)Though I can see both sides of the argument surrounding vaccinations, I stand firm in my support of vaccinations. Vaccines have done wonders for our world and our life span. They have given people peace of mind when it comes to deadly communicable diseases such as measles, polio and diphtheria. Vaccinations have protected children and adults alike for hundreds of years
Some suggest that vaccinations cause autism, fibral seizures, neuropsychological issues, etc. Healthychildren.com shows outcomes of studies that have debunked all of these issues. The only results that the studies did show was a correlation between anaphylaxis and the HPV vaccine and chickenpox outbreak with the chickenpox vaccine.
I don’t know about anyone else, but if I have a child, I would want them vaccinated against the diseases that took so many lives and ruined so many families. People say, “well we don’t need to worry about those diseases anymore”, but the only reason we don’t need to worry is due to vaccines that have safeguarded us. Every parent should weigh the pros and cons while considering if they should vaccinate their child, but for me, the pros greatly outweigh any cons.
3)According to our book, a health disparity is defined as “a type of difference in health that is closely linked with social or economic disadvantage. Health disparities negatively affect groups of people who have systematically experienced greater social or economic obstacles to health” (Riegeleman & Kirkwood, 2019, pp. 679-680). When typing health disparities into the search option, a lot of articles are about the different types of disparities faced today. Disparities can include race, sexual orientation, and disability. The major health disparity that I see being discussed often is access to mental health care. Kamal 2017 reports, “1 in 5 U.S. Adults experience mental health illness in a year” (Kamal, 2017). Despite the large numbers of people affected with mental health illnesses yearly, a large number are not seeking care due to lack of access to mental health facilities. According to Cohen Veterans Network, 53% of these adults underused mental health services for reasons that were out of their control, such as lack of access to care. What I see being done towards addressing this issue is the utilization of Telehealth services. Technology is improving the healthcare system and it is being utilized more often for mental health illnesses.
4) According to Healthypeople.gov (2019), a current plan in place for health disparities involves continued and future research within prominent areas mentioned which are affecting Americans daily. Two issues that stand out to me that are mentioned would be sleep and environmental health. As stated in Healthypeople.gov (2019), inadequate sleep can cause diseases such as heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity and has the potential to cause death. In regards to environmental health, problems such as mold in populated areas are currently causing illnesses and this too has the potential to cause death.
In my local community, an elementary school shut down when a teacher who had been an employee at the school for several years displayed increasing respiratory symptoms. Through professional help and diagnostic tests, mold was the culprit and had been giving this teacher severe health problems. This lead to investigating her work area and resulted in closing the elementary school. Because of this, mold is being looked into in almost every school as it should and if more schools are forced to shut down then that is how they will handle it at the moment in order to provide a safe environment for the children, staff, and anyone in contact with the affected schools.