Vaccination as a Public Health Achievement

The last hundred some years has brought about innumerable changes in the United States. Americans have exceled in advancements of technology, science, government, economy, and a multitude of other facets of life. At the heart of such advancements, however, is the elongation of human life. With an additional 30 years added to the average lifespan, more people are able to live to see such advancements thrive (“Ten Great Public Health Achievements”, 1999). It is thanks to the improvements in public health that such a feat was accomplished. Vaccination, for one, has played a large role in the bettering of health status in the United States. This is the process of generating immunity for a specific disease by introducing a vaccine into the body (“Immunization: The Basics”, 2018). The CDC currently reports 17 vaccines available for dangerous diseases and another 9 for certain travel situations (“Recommended Vaccines by Age”, 2016). This readily available preventative measure seems routine in this day and age, but it wasn’t always so.

Vaccination was born out of inoculation, a method that began in 1796 to protect against small pox (Offit, 2019). Inoculation involved taking a piece of infected matter and introducing it into the body, with the intent of preventing full spread of the disease (Science Museum, 2019). This disease once killed 3 out of every 10 people who contracted it in the United States and tallied global death rates that surpassed the total number of people killed in all world wars (“History of Smallpox”, 2016; Perlin & Cohen, 2002). It absolutely ravished societies in its killing ability, but today, is completely eradicated. The inoculation method for smallpox eventually changed to vaccination at some point during the 1800s and became widely used for disease prevention (“History of Smallpox”, 2016). Other diseases like polio, measles, and rubella have not been eradicated, but rather eliminated. The term refers to a halt in disease transmission within a specific area, like the United States, but not worldwide (Praderio, 2019). To touch on more recent success, Dr. Patricia McLaine states, “There’s been a 95% decrease in vaccine-preventable disease in the last 50 years” (Quirk, 2019). The statistics are endless to represent how crucial vaccination has been (and continues to be) to public health in the United States. However, this monster achievement relies on a number of different participants in order to maintain success (Orenstein et al., 2005).

The United States vaccine system utilizers key players that include vaccine companies, health care professionals, insurers, relevant scholars, and the federal, state, and local levels of government (Orenstein et al., 2005). The federal government plays perhaps the largest role as it has its hand in nearly every main component of the vaccine-system; the CDC and National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimate disease burden, the NIH supports and monitors vaccine discovery, the FDA approves specifications for production as well as safety regulations, and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) works with people alleging injuries due to vaccine error (Orenstein et al., 2005).

Vaccination has been labeled one of the greatest public health achievements by the CDC with good reason. A study wrote, “In 2013, it was estimated that 103 million cases of childhood diseases in the United States had been prevented by the use of vaccines since 1924” (Rémy et al., 2015). Diseases that once caused suffering and near absolute death are now a part of history, something that Americans read about and study rather than having to endure, thanks to vaccines. It takes national effort and cooperation among levels of government in order to successfully run the vaccine-system in the United States. Over the century, every political level has found its role and every outside health care entity has played a crucial part in the delivery of vaccines. This public health tool has not only saved lives, but it has helped stretch the number of years in which those lives can live.