Vaccine Archives - NOAH | Neighborhood Outreach Access to Health

Tag Archive for: Vaccine

Are Your Vaccines Up to Date?

April 20, 2022/in Immunizations

If you’re a parent you’ve likely discussed vaccinations on a regular basis with your child’s healthcare provider. Schools and other youth programs may have even required proof of vaccination prior to your child attending.

Who Should Get Vaccinated?

As we get older and focus on other priorities when we visit our healthcare providers, it’s easy for vaccinations to fall off the radar, but immunization benefits older people too. Vaccines can prevent infection-related cancers caused by viruses like hepatitis and HPV, and protect the health of the working population, the elderly, and others who may be more prone to, or experience severe complications from, infection. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a handy tool for children and a handy tool for adults to determine which vaccines you should consider based on your age and risk factors. This can be a great starting point and reminder to discuss vaccines with your healthcare provider.

Why Should You Get Vaccinated?

While getting vaccinated against infectious disease is sometimes a personal choice, there’s proof that immunization saves lives and protects people’s health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the death rate for children under the age of five worldwide declined by almost 25% between 2010 and 2017. Measles vaccines alone prevented 25.5 million deaths since 2000 and polio vaccines have brought cases down by over 99% in the last 35 years. We’re fortunate to have had access to these vaccines in the United States for decades but many underdeveloped countries experience limited vaccine availability and use due to lack of funding and proper education.

Your Choice to Get Vaccinated Affects Others

With COVID, we all experienced and continue to live with the disruptive and costly effects of a worldwide pandemic. With the development and distribution of a vaccine to prevent the spread of COVID, our children have gone back to school, social events and travel have resumed and the number of people losing their lives to COVID has been greatly reduced. It didn’t happen overnight and we only began to see significant changes once a large percentage of the population was vaccinated. Establishing wide-spread immunity is critical to fighting infectious disease so those choosing to not get vaccinated can affect everyone’s chance of survival.

In recognition of August as National Immunization Awareness Month, NOAH urges you to make time to review the vaccination recommendations for yourself and your family and consult with your healthcare provider about any questions or concerns you may have. And if vaccination is right for you, take a step toward protecting yourself and others by getting vaccinated.

Click or call 480-882-4545 to schedule an appointment to discuss with your healthcare provider.

Honoring Black History Month: Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett

February 17, 2022/in Health Education, Immunizations, Medical

Saving Lives With Modern Day Medicine

Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett is a female African-American scientist known for helping to create the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. She is currently the Assistant Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Shutzer Assistant Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Dr. Corbett developed her interest in science early in life and committed to pursuing a career in science while she was still in high school. She embraced every opportunity to participate in lab research working alongside world famous scientists. After earning her bachelor’s degree, Dr. Corbett went to work as a trainer for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where she also studied respiratory illness and vaccine development.

For the next five years she continued her research on the other side of the world in Sri Lanka before returning to the NIH in 2014 to work on vaccine development. Dr. Corbett’s efforts led medical advancements that would later be used in the creation of the COVID-19 vaccine.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a team of NIH researchers including Dr. Corbett, began developing a vaccine based on some of the previous research conducted by Dr. Corbett. To manufacture and test the vaccine, the NIH partnered with Moderna, a biotechnology company. The vaccine rapidly entered animal trials soon followed by clinical trials; eventually to become one of the first approved vaccines for COVID-19.

When asked about her involvement with the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, Corbett said, “To be living in this moment where I have the opportunity to work on something that has imminent global importance…it’s just a surreal moment for me”. Corbett also stated she cried when results showed the Moderna vaccine worked.

NOAH honors Black History Month with snapshots of just a few of the important, impactful, and life-saving stories of Black history and healthcare in America. One of our primary goals at NOAH is to ensure quality healthcare for every member of our community. To do that, we will look at where we have been as a society, what we have accomplished, and how we will collectively achieve this goal.