April 18, 2013

the measles epidemic, plus new paper on vaccines and teenagers

After sustained media interest in the South Wales measles epidemic, the SMC invited speakers in for a background Q and A session.

A new paper, published by Elsevier, was also presented on teenagers’ understandings of and attitudes towards vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases. Public health workers efforts are currently focussed on increasing MMR vaccination rates amongst children and teenagers, and the paper explores the challenges of communicating benefits of immunization to an age-group who often don’t know much about vaccines.

The speakers came to talk about the paper, the current measles crisis, what it says about the future of vaccination, about the other M and the R (mumps and rubella), and about where they expect the next outbreak to occur.

Speakers:

Dr David Elliman, Immunisation Specialist of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health

Dr Helen Bedford, Senior Lecturer in Children’s Health, Paediatric Epidemiology Unit, UCL Institute of Child Health

Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, GP and author of MMR and Autism: What Parents Need To Know

Joff McGill, Head of Information, Advice and Research, SENSE

Dr Shona Hilton, Programme Leader, MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit