Family Vaccinations
Overview
Why is your aunt not getting your little nephew vaccinated? And why won’t other family members allow them to visit because of it? Can you help your family with this argument? Can you help bring them back together?
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Learning Objectives
To better understand immunity and immunizations, students should be able to:
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Explain how the immune system works to provide immunity to disease.
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Describe how herd immunity prevents disease.
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Explain how vaccinations prevents disease.
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List examples of how vaccines have impacted disease occurrence in world health.
Scenario
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You are just making yourself comfortable on the sofa with a large bowl of popcorn that should see you through your history class homework when the evening news begins. Your parents watch it every night and you know that soon their nightly “debate” will begin—your mom is liberal and your dad is conservative. So they say. To you, they are both conservative.
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You tune them out and your headphones help a lot with that when something catches your attention. You pull your headphones off just in time to hear about an outbreak of measles. The outbreak was spreading. Was this the same type of thing that you heard about last year when a disease called “mumps” was going around some college campuses near you? It seemed like a
bizarre type of disease at the time and you
had asked your parents about it. You had
never heard of anyone getting mumps
before and it didn’t sound like something
you wanted to get. People with mumps have
face pain, fever, headache, sore throats, and
swelling of the glands in the neck and face! Image: Child infected with the mumps virus and showing swollen lymph glands in the neck and face. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumps
Your parents had told you that you won’t get mumps because you had been vaccinated against it. Relieved, you hadn’t thought about it again.
Now, people were getting measles? The news report went on to say that the outbreak was caused in part because people were choosing not to get vaccinated for measles. Your mom said that your Aunt Jenny has not had your little nephew vaccinated and that your Aunt Becky may not let him come around your new baby niece. Now, you’re shocked. You didn’t think anything would interfere with family get-togethers. And what’s going to happen to your after- school and weekend baby-sitting jobs if you can’t have the babies together when your aunts are working?
Image: Child with typical measles rash. Content Provider: CDC. Image: http://phil.cdc.gov/phil/details.asp
Even worse, your extended family is apparently taking sides. Some of your relatives want everyone immunized against everything; others don’t want to vaccinate at all or they want to delay vaccinations. From your mom and dad’s conversation, things are getting tense. You don’t want this to cause problems in your family.
Your mom goes on to say that you are due for another immunization, but she’s not sure she wants you to have it based on what Aunt Jenny is saying. Maybe you can wait for a few years to get it.
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Your parents also say that your school district may be changing its policy on immunizations. With everything that in the news lately, more people might not get their children immunized.
What is going on?
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You decide that you are going to use this controversy as the topic you need for your science class project coming up. The assignment is to pick a current topic in the news and present the science information and data concerning the topic.
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Given that you know that the issue is causing problems in your own family and that your school system is thinking about a possible vaccination policy change, you are sure that this would be a good topic to investigate.
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Guiding Questions
1. Why are vaccines important to the prevention of disease? How does a vaccine prevent disease?
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2. Why would your aunt not immunize your nephew? What is the controversy about vaccinations?
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3. Why does your Aunt Becky not want your nephew around her baby?
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4. How does herd immunity protect children who cannot get immunized because of a health problem or children who are too young to be immunized?
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5. If your school district changes its policies about immunizations and allows more parents to opt out of getting their children immunized, how might that affect disease rates in your community and in your school?
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6. What is the solution to your family’s problem? What can you do to help? Are you for people getting immunized to protect them from disease or are you against it? Explain.
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7. Are you for people getting immunized to protect them from disease or are you against it? Explain.
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Support material for this module includes:
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