Vaccine Safety: Getting the Message to Parents in Doubt

Measles, mumps and whooping cough have been around a long time -- along with the vaccines to prevent them. But instead of being a distant memory in the United States -- like polio -- outbreaks of these infectious childhood diseases keep cropping up, and parents refusing or delaying vaccinations are a contributing factor.

With a steady flow of misinformation online on vaccine safety, it's no wonder some parents hesitate. But childhood illnesses can cause serious harm, and teens and young adults can also be at risk when their childhood immunity fades. In response, doctors are going beyond office visits to spread the word on immunizations.

[Read: Why You Should Get the Flu Vaccine .]

Vaccination as Opportunity

Wendy Sue Swanson, a pediatrician and executive director of digital health at Seattle Children's Hospital, has empathy for parents who don't want to expose their "beautiful, perfect and healthy" baby to a medical intervention. A mother herself, she understands that when it comes to protecting their children, parents often have an instinct that "less is more." But, she says, childhood vaccinations are "the profound exception" to that notion. When it comes potentially dangerous diseases, the more you can prevent them through immunization, the better.

If you feel like your kids get too many vaccines at a time, or that there are too many vaccines overall, she suggests turning that thinking around. "The inverse of this is, 'Wow, we have the opportunity to provide this protection from these life-changing and life-threatening infections earlier than we did when we ourselves were children," Swanson says.

She points to recently developed, "remarkable" vaccines that didn't exist a generation ago. Pneumococcal vaccine, which protects against pneumonia, meningitis and bloodstream infections, was introduced for infants in 2000. The oral vaccine for rotavirus, which is first given at 2 months old, was approved for widespread use among infants in 2006.

"Those [are] opportunities to protect our kids from harm, from disease, from days out of day care, from hospitalizations for dehydration -- and in the Third World, from death from vomiting and dehydration from diarrheal illness, for instance due to diseases like rotavirus," she says.

With once common conditions such as measles, mumps or chickenpox, parents may take protection for granted, or feel that they're not that serious -- after all, they came down with the infections as kids and survived just fine. Swanson says as the anti-vaccine movement gained steam about eight years ago, she noticed more parental "lip biters" who were hesitant about immunization. While most adhered to recommended vaccination schedules, she says, about "20 percent were a little concerned that an alternative schedule might be better."

But, "an alternative schedule is an untested schedule," she says. "So when a family makes a schedule up for themselves, they're increasing the amount of time that a child is vulnerable to acquiring an infection." The bottom line, she says, is "there's never been a single study that found the immune system couldn't tolerate vaccines in combination and on the routine schedule."

[Read: Germs That Can Send Your Kid to the Hospital -- And How to Avoid Them .]

Myth Busters

So far this year, more than 480 cases of mumps have been reported in a Central Ohio outbreak, according to the Ohio Department of Health. California is experiencing an outbreak of pertussis (whooping cough), with more than 7,500 cases reported in 2014. And in terms of measles, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported 18 outbreaks with 592 cases overall this year.

Frustrated by the situation -- three California infants have died of whooping during the latest outbreak -- Linda Girgis, a family practitioner in South River, New Jersey, turned to Twitter and a physician blog on debunking anti-vaccination myths. She sums up the facts to counter misinformation -- ranging from the long-discredited, fraudulent study tying the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine to autism, to the idea that doctors push vaccinations to make big money.

Fortunately, Girgis has only had to deal with a few cases of mumps so far this year in her practice. While she doesn't encounter many vaccine refusers, she says the number is rising. When she asks parents why, they tell her they're scared of autism; they're scared of preservatives in the vaccine; they're scared of complications. And they're not aware of all the studies supporting vaccine safety.

"I try to give them evidence -- what the CDC and [World Health Organization] have put out as evidence," she says. That helps in some cases, she says, although other parents already have their minds set. Some listen to celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, who has long claimed that vaccines, among other environmental factors, are tied to autism. "Parents tend to believe celebrities more than science," Girgis says.

She warns parents to not read all the dubious sources. "You can pick these out because they're spammy -- like they're trying to sell products," she says. "Go with the well-known organizations that have actual links to studies."

[See: Top Reasons Children End Up in the Hospital .]

Reaching Out to Parents

On the West Coast, Swanson is seeing signs of progress. "I work in a pretty vaccine-resistant or vaccine-hesitant space in Washington state historically," she says, "and we're doing a better job than we did before." More kids are getting vaccinated, she says, and school are seeing fewer parents requesting exemptions from vaccination requirements for philosophical reasons.

For all the focus on "vaccine-hesitant" parents, when it comes to American kids getting immunizations, Swanson sees the glass as nearly full. Although about 10 percent of parents delay vaccines or use "alternative" schedules, "when you really look at all of those who flat-out refuse all immunizations, it's somewhere between 1 and 2 percent -- a really small proportion," Swanson says. That means nearly 90 percent follow the recommended guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics and CDC.

But for the minority of parents who remain resistant, all the scientific evidence, CDC guidelines and WHO recommendations don't matter if they aren't getting the message. So doctors are using the same media spaces -- blogs, Facebook, columns and books -- to reach out to parents who were only hearing from vaccine naysayers. Swanson, for instance, is spreading the pro-vaccine word on multiple platforms: she appears on TV, she keeps up a blog , she writes for The Huffington Post and she just had a book published, "Mama Doc Medicine," which explains why vaccines are so important. .

When she was a child, Swanson says her mother was likely to turn to her mother, the pediatrician, Dr. Spock and maybe her next-door neighbor for child care advice. But now, she says, "the new expert is your 'tribe' on social media. We know that mom-to-mom, friend-to-friend communication is a really big part of your tribe. ... And with 20 clicks you can get all sorts of information, but you don't know who wrote it."

Her plea to parents: "If you hesitate about getting your child a vaccine, the one thing you can't do is hesitate to get more information from an expert." While you're Googling, she says, click onto the CDC or American Academy of Pediatrics vaccination pages for parents. "Your tribe may be your most powerful voice, but pediatricians really do have expertise," Swanson says. "Invite pediatricians into your tribe. Listen to what they say. Let them populate your Facebook feed too."

[Read: America's Healthiest Counties for Kids .]

Lisa Esposito is a Patient Advice reporter at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at lesposito@usnews.com.