Don’t Miss This Study on Missed Opportunities for Rotavirus Vaccine Administration :

The cost of a young child getting rotavirus is one that doesn’t just affect the child, but the family as well with potential days of work missed, extra health care visits to a primary care office, emergency department, or even an inpatient admission, and other expenses that ideally could be prevented through the simple administration of the rotavirus vaccine. Yet sadly, some children who are age-appropriate and eligible for the vaccine don’t get it, despite getting other age-appropriate vaccines being administered at the same health maintenance visit. But how many children are we talking about? To answer that question, Sederdahl et al (10.1542/peds.2018-2498) analyzed the National Immunization Survey of families with children ages 19-35 months to find out whether opportunities were missed to receive rotavirus vaccine, especially if the family did receive doses of DTaP or MMR vaccine between 6 weeks and 24 months of age.  Sadly, 29% of the 14,571 children were not fully vaccinated against rotavirus but could have been, including 14% of infants and toddlers who received no doses of rotavirus vaccine. In this group, 72% of these children had gotten a DTaP between 6 weeks and 8 months of age, and 83% had had at least a DTaP or MMR between 6 weeks and 24 months of age.  You might think families who were underserved or suffered from adverse social determinants of health were most likely to miss getting the rotavirus vaccine series, but just the opposite—patient of families of higher socioeconomic status were more likely not to get this important vaccine.  If we are to achieve the Healthy People 2020 goal of vaccinating 80% of the children in this country against rotavirus, we need to inject more time and attention into educating families about the importance of this vaccine and the minimal if any minor side effects of giving it to children.  Pull up a loose stool and sit down and read this study to learn more.