Currently, El Dorado County has some of the lowest immunization coverage levels in California
Vaccines aren’t just for infants and young children anymore. New vaccines aimed at preteens aged 11 and 12 years are now recommended by many medical and public health advisory groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These new vaccines are creating new opportunities to prevent serious diseases in adolescents and young adults. For the first time, young people can pass from childhood into young adulthood with a significantly lower risk of chronic infectious cough due to pertussis, or meningitis and life threatening infection due to the meningococcus, or even cervical cancer due to the human papillomavirus.
It was decided that parents of all 6 th and 7 th graders attending public schools in El Dorado County would be invited to have their children receive the three new recommended vaccines. FluMist, the nasal spray influenza vaccine, would also be offered for the upcoming flu season, with the traditional flu shot available for those not eligible for FluMist for medical reasons.
All vaccines would be given at no cost to parents, at school, during school hours. Student participation would be completely voluntary. Public Health Department staff, led by a team of well trained public health nurses, would travel to each school during the first two weeks of October, immunizing all students whose parents had completed a simple consent form. Girls receiving the HPV vaccine series would receive the second dose in December and the third dose in April, 2008. The campaign would be called “IZ Xtreme:” a name that resonates with preteens fond of abbreviations (“IZ” means immunizations) and partial to “extreme” sports.
