Coordinating the delivery of vaccinations and other preventive health care recommendations for adolescents.

Adolescent Medicine and Sports Medicine Section, Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA. abmiddle@texaschildrens.org

Preventive medicine 2011 Oct

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Although recommendations for annual preventive care for adolescents have been in place for decades, the need to bring adolescents to the medical setting for newly recommended vaccines has placed this issue in the public health spotlight. Aggressive efforts have been ongoing to increase adolescent adherence to new vaccine recommendations--a measured outcome variable, and the hope has been that enhanced adherence to comprehensive health care visits will follow. Evidence indicates that the implementation of more comprehensive preventive health care elements among adolescents may be improving; however, a passive approach to bringing more adolescents to preventive health visits using vaccine as an incentive may not be effective for all youth. This paper reviews the history of recommendations for new vaccines as well as comprehensive health care visit recommendations for adolescents, how these recommendations may synergistically improve preventive care for adolescents, and how we may need to continue to think creatively to further access all youth for preventive health care using vaccination implementation as a model for reaching out beyond the providers' office walls. Copyright © 2011. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Citation

Amy B Middleman. Coordinating the delivery of vaccinations and other preventive health care recommendations for adolescents. Preventive medicine. 2011 Oct;53 Suppl 1:S22-8