**UPDATE - 2024 PANA VACCINATION POLICY**
To our current and prospective patients,
We are very grateful for our community here at Pediatric Associates of North
Atlanta. It gives us great pride and joy to be able to bring premier, evidencebased care to our patients and to watch them grow and thrive.
As part of this evidence-based care, we adhere to the vaccine guidelines of the American
Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the
Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). We feel it is important to
follow these recommendations as part of our practice. Our goal is to keep our
patients healthy through adequate immunization practice and to protect them
against preventable infections with their serious consequences.
We have made the decision to no longer accept new families to our practice
who choose not to vaccinate their children at all. We do not want to offend
anyone, but rather to treat our existing patients in a safe and evidence-based
way.
We do not recommend alternate vaccine schedules because delaying
vaccines can increase the chance of contracting a preventable infection.
Alternate vaccine schedules also do not have scientific studies backing them,
which means that we cannot know if they are equally as effective as the
vaccine schedule set out by AAP/CDC/ACIP.
We will continue to work with families who choose to delay vaccines, as long as
we feel it is reasonable.
The link to the ACIP/AAP guidelines for vaccinations is attached below for your
reference. We also feel that our role as pediatricians is to have discussions
regarding vaccine efficacy and safety, so we encourage you to ask us
questions if you have them.
How Do Vaccines Work?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8fewK2Vxes
Our practice believes that all children should receive the recommended vaccines according to the guidelines provided by the AAP and CDC. Vaccines are safe and effective in preventing diseases and health complications in children and young adults. Regular vaccinations help children ward off infections and are one of the safest and best methods of disease prevention.
Here is our office's current vaccine schedule.
Delaying vaccines puts your child and the children they come in contact with at risk for severe infections. We need to insure that our office and waiting room are safe for our patients. We strongly discourage delaying vaccines, as there is no evidence that delaying them makes them safer, and it leaves children unprotected for a greater period of time.
There is a great deal of science behind the recommended vaccine schedule. The success of immunizing for many years has allowed many people to worry less about the diseases and now worry about the vaccines instead. The risk of these vaccine-preventable diseases is far greater than unproven concerns about their safety. Your doctor will be happy to discuss any concerns that you may have. For more information, please visit:
Vaccine Safety: The Facts A brief fact sheet on vaccines from the AAP
For detailed informational sheets published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) please visit www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/vis .
Vaccine Information Statements (VIS) can be found at the follwoing link: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/vis/current-vis.html
Recommended Immunization Schedule
Link to Vaccine schedule/ACIP recommended schedule here: