CDC Releases Adult Vaccine Assessment Tool

It’s the time of year when we all hear about the importance of getting our flu and pneumonia vaccines, but there’s also some other important vaccines available to adults.

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta has put out a questionnaire for adults to determine what vaccinations they should receive and when.

It’s called the Adult Vaccine Assessment Tool and is available on the CDC web site.

Dave Palmer with District 2 Public Health says the tool is helpful for all adults of any age regardless of your current health.

“The Adult Vaccine Assessment tool is for all adults, Palmer said. “You can go in and fill out the questionaire and it will tell you what vaccines that you m ay need. We’ve had questions about shingles. We’ve had quesions about Hepatitis A because we recently had an outbreak. So, this assessment tool will tell you as an adult which vaccines you currently need to have.”

Palmer notes most adults don’t realize there are more vaccines available to them than just the annual flu shot.

“Most of the time adults think, ‘I need to get my flu shot every year and I need to get my tetanus shot every ten years.’ However, in recent years there’s been new vaccines to come out, like the shingles vaccine or the pneumonia vaccine that have come out for adults,” Palmer noted.

And there’s one more vaccine that most adults don’t typically think they need, but it’s an important way to help adults protect children, according to Palmer.

It’s the T-dap vaccine.

“One recommendation is that we ask for people to consider is that if they’ve never had the T-dap vaccine as an adult, they should do so. The T-dap vaccine is for tetanus, diptheria and pertussis, which is whooping cough. What researchers have recently discovered is that  adults often times carry the whooping cough (pertussis) virus and they pass that on to children. So, if we get that as an adult, we can help protect our children,” Palmer explained.

You can access the Adult Vaccine Assessment Tool by going to District 2 Public Health and clicking on Adult Vaccine Assessment Tool link, which will take you to the CDC questionaire.

All of the vaccines for adults are available at any County Health Department clinic.