Vax Talk

Dr. Richard Pan has been a champion for community immunity his entire career, from his beginnings as a resident in Pittsburgh to his work in the California legislation to eliminate non-medical vaccine exemptions. We invited him to the show to give us the broad perspective of the work he has done and the work we all need to do.

Nurses Who Vaccinate's Melody Butler swung by the podcast and threw down the gauntlet, challenging Nathan to a trivia duel. Who knows more about vaccines and their history? Listen to find out. Thank you to our friends at Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for the questions. Play for yourself at https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/parents-pack/play-just-vax-vaccine-tr...

Continuing with our NIAM2019 GAME SHOW theme, this time inviting Keith Law to play Offit, Wakefield, or Dan Brown. Keith Law is an ESPN contributor, baseball expert, author, and vaccine enthusiast, making him the perfect person to compete against Nathan in naming the author of various vaccine-related book excerpts. Find Keith's book at: https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062490223/smart-baseball/

You first met him on Facebook when he pretended to be customer service for Large Retail Store. Because he has also satirized the world's most notorious anti vaccine activists, we invited Ben Palmer to play Troll or Be Trolled in celebration of National Immunization Awareness Month. But the only trolling we do is trolling VPDs with our vaccines. Most of the Tweets can be found the Voices4Vaccines h...

August is the month every year that the U.S. celebrates the good work vaccines do in our community. For NIAM 2019, we have decided to celebrate with Game Show Month! Our first game is Fact Checker. We invited health journalist Tara Haelle aboard to listen to a media interview with a self-proclaimed vaccine expert rebutting Jon Oliver. Watch the original Jon Oliver piece here: https://www.youtube.c...

Polio is *this close* to being eradicated, so we invited Rotary International's Dr. Carol Pandak to the show to discuss their mission to end polio. In addition, Nathan and Karen discuss Jessica Biel and SB 276 as well as Karen's Big ACIP adventure, and other methods anti-vaccine activists use to legitimize their cause. Links from the episode: https://www.endpolio.org/ https://jezebel.com/well-here...

In this episode, Karen and Nathan discuss the latest measles outbreaks with Dr. Paul Offit. He takes us through how these outbreaks behave, what causes them, measles elimination, what measles is actually like, and how we can all work together to prevent future outbreaks. Links from the show: Marcia Brady: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/04/28/717595757/brady-bunch-episode-fuels-camp...

In this special NIIW mini-episode, Karen talks to a different Dr. Nathan (Dr. Chomilo) about the 25th anniversary of National Infant Immunization Rates and how the reasons for not vaccinating have changed over the years. They also discuss current measles outbreaks. Links/sources from the episode: What is NIIW? https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/events/niiw/overview.html StarTribune editorial: http://www...

A few months ago, Ethan Linenberger was just a teenager with a Reddit account. He used that account to find out how to get himself vaccinated, and now he is one of the youngest--and smartest--vaccine advocates around. We talked to him about vaccines, social media, and how teens can engage in this space. Find Ethan at his website to learn more about what he has done: https://www.adolescentadvocate....

Vaccine buzz is buzzier lately, with a new, young advocate (Ethan Lindenberger) traveling to Washington, D.C. to testify about why he got vaccinated after his mother had refused to vaccinate him and with anti-vaccine activists trying to "inundate" the ACIP meeting at the CDC. We will tackle those topics and talk to three special guests about ACIP updates. L.J. Tan discusses with us the latest flu...

It's been more than a decade since a U.S. court, in an omnibus proceeding, found that vaccines do not cause autism, but that finding has sparked a new conspiracy theory, thanks in part to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. We invited vaccine law expert Dr. Dorit Reiss to our show to discuss with her how this new conspiracy theory does not hold up to scrutiny.

The HPV Vaccine seems to have a special place--not as a cancer-preventing tool but as something people sometimes fear. But when the science is clear that this vaccine is safe and needed, why do some refuse it? For answers, we talk to Dr. Noel Brewer, a health behavior expert and chair of the National HPV Roundtable. Links from the episode: Guardian Facebook article: https://www.theguardian.com/soc...

Do you get your flu shot? Does everyone you know get one, too? We invited Dr. LJ Tan to talk to us about last year's flu season, this year's flu forecast, flu vaccine uptake, and Riverdale. Links from this episode: Wonder Woman Vaccinates--https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Gal-Gadot-joins-Israeli-vaccine-campaign-amid-measles-outbreak-572950 Parent(hetical) Science Podcast--https://www.parenthetic...

Dr. Peter Hotez is a pediatrician, a vaccinologist, and a parent of Rachel, who is autistic. His new book, Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism, leaves no wiggle room for doubt about whether or not he embraces scientific consensus concerning vaccines. In this episode, we talked to Dr. Hotez about his book, about his daughter, about why vaccines cannot cause autism, and about the anti-vaccine mov...

If measles has been eliminated from North America, what's up with these outbreaks? Is it even possible to get rid of it globally and for good? We invited CDC's Dr. Mark Papania and Dr. Manisha Patel to answer all of our measles eradication questions. This episode was sponsored by the Task Force for Global Health in honor of Dr. Samuel Katz and Dr. Walter Orenstein, both of whom have played critica...

A PICU nurse contemplates swabbing a measles patients to infect her own child. A nurse practitioner makes a video about how to school pediatricians on vaccines. What is a pro-vaccine advocate to do? We invited Nurses Who Vaccinate's Melody Butler to discuss all things anti-vaccine nurses. Links from the show Nurses Who Vaccinate: http://www.nurseswhovaccinate.org/ CDC Pink Book Webinar: https://ww...

At age 44, Jason Mendolsohn was diagnosed with Stage IV HPV throat cancer, and now he's on a mission to convince families to prevent this cancer in their children through immunization. Check out Jason at https://supermanhpv.com/. In this episode, we also chat about Russian bots. Here's the link to that study: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304567

Please note: This episode IS appropriate for kids of all ages, and we invite everyone to listen. Ethan Posard has a film credit and has published a book--and he's only 17. Meet vaccine advocacy's most influential young hero in this week's episode about teens, kids, vaccines, and advocacy.

New parents have many questions about vaccines. What is the best way to answer those questions and to handle potential vaccine concerns? We talked to Mayo Clinic's Dr. Bob Jacobson and tapped into his wealth of experience about all things vaccines before age two!

It's National Immunization Awareness Month, week 1. We are focused on vaccines during pregnancies, the two-for-one that protects both mom and baby. To talk about this important topic, we invited What to Expect's Heidi Murkoff to share her expertise and give us all advice about how to reach women during pregnancy and encourage immunization,

Echo chambers, Dunning-Kruger, misinformation, and conspiracy theories. These bad parts of social media are what pro-vaccine advocates battle daily and are the subject of this episode. Nathan and Karen talk to Dr. Jen Golbeck, director of the Social Intelligence Lab at the University of Maryland, College Park. (Plus, hear our new intro!) Find our NIAM t-shirts at cafepress.com/voicesforvaccines

Karen traveled to Atlanta for the National Immunization Conference and met many amazing people, a few of whom are featured in this episode. Nathan talks about the great pro-vaccine advocates we know, and they both discuss why we all advocate and what we can do to create more vaccine confidence. This episode is sponsored by the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia: vaccin...

Nathan and Karen talk to Every Child By Two's Amy Pisani about how the immunization challenges have changed over the decades and what challenges we face in our work together combatting vaccine-preventable diseases. Links from the episode: Every Child By Two/Vaccinate Your Family, http://vaccinateyourfamily.org/ Hotez/Caplan article, https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/anti-vaccine-misinformation-...

So much of vaccine advocacy is aimed at mothers, but where are the dads in all of this? To find out, Nathan and Karen talked to Dean Masello, writer, comedian, and SAHD. Find him at wokedad.com. This episode was made possible by a generous donation from Immunization Action Coalition: immunize.org.

Karen and Nathan host Dr. Chad Hayes and Natalie Newell from the Parenthetical Science podcast for a rousing discussion about how parenting is harder than it needs to be and how people fall into the neverending woo rabbit hole. Links from the episode: Social media/HPV article: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1WeU26gdZRcH6E Nathan's Needlephobia video: https://www.facebook.com/PedsGeekMD/videos/1460...