We firmly believe in the effectiveness of vaccines to prevent serious illness and save lives. We firmly believe in the safety of vaccines.
We firmly believe that all children and young adults should receive all of the recommended vaccines according to the schedule published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention & the American Academy of Pediatrics.
We firmly believe that vaccines and their components do not cause autism or other developmental disabilities.
We firmly believe that vaccinating children and young adults may be the single most important health-promoting intervention we perform as healthcare providers, and that you can perform as parents/caregivers. The recommended vaccines and the vaccine schedule are the results of many years of scientific study and data gathering on millions of children by our brightest scientists and physicians.
We also acknowledge that there has always been, and will likely always be, controversy surrounding vaccination. Vaccination campaigns are so successful in preventing diseases that there have been some who believe that they should no longer be given. It is due to vaccines that you have never seen a child with polio, tetanus, whooping cough, bacterial meningitis, or chickenpox. You may have never had a friend of family member lose a child to one of these diseases. Such success can make us complacent or even resistant to vaccination. If this attitude becomes widespread it can lead to tragic results.
After publication of an unfounded accusation (later retracted) that MMR vaccine caused autism in 1988, many Europeans chose not to vaccinate their children. This underimmunization led to Europe experiencing large outbreaks of measles. In 2012, there were more than 48,000 cases of whooping cough (Pertussis) in the United States (with most victims younger than six months of age). Many children who contracted the illness had parents who made a conscious decision not to vaccinate. In 2015, there was a measles outbreak in Disneyland (California) which ultimately spread to 147 people including children who were too young to be vaccinated.
When you don’t vaccinate, you take a significant risk with your child’s health and the health of others around them. We recognize that the choice may be very emotional for some parents, but should you have doubts or concerns, please discuss these with your healthcare provider. We highly recommend adhering to the current schedule for vaccination; but in some cases, we may alter the schedule to accommodate parental concerns or reservations. Please be advised, however, that delaying or “breaking up the vaccines” to give one or two at a time over two or more visits goes against expert recommendations and can put your child at risk for serious illness (or even death). It also goes against our medical advice as providers at El Paso Pediatric Associates, P.A. Such additional visits will require additional co-pays on your part.
Finally, if you should absolutely refuse to vaccinate your child despite all of our efforts, we will ask you to find another healthcare provider who shares your views. Please recognize that by not vaccinating, you are placing your child at unnecessary risk for life-threatening illness, disability, and even death.
As medical professionals we feel very strongly that vaccinating your child on schedule with currently available vaccines is absolutely the right thing to do to protect all children and young adults. Please feel free to discuss any questions or concerns you may have about vaccines with any one of us.
Sincerely,
Drs. Segapeli, Rodriguez, Kronfol, Coleman, Wawer, and Herrera