The CDC has emphasized the importance of vaccinations with the release of its vaccination schedules.
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Jamie Barrand | Feb 5, 2016

CDC releases 2016 vaccination schedules for adults, children

According to medical care professionals, vaccinations are one of the easiest, most accessible ways for people to keep themselves and their children healthy.

Every year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) -- along with representatives from the American Academy of Family Practitioners (AAFP) and other medical organizations -- compile a recommended schedule of immunizations for adults and children.

According to Dr. Margot Savoy, the AAFP liaison to the ACIP, the schedule can be a jumping-off point for physicians to start talking to their patients about the importance of immunizing themselves and their children.

This year's schedule includes several changes, such as the timing of pneumococcal vaccination for older adults and for serogroup B meningococcal vaccination for children and adolescents.

One of the vaccines included in the recommendations is the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine. The HPV vaccine's suggested age is 11 or 12 for both boys and girls. It can be given to children as young as nine and is also included in the catch-up schedule for women as old as 26 and men as old as 21.

Patients who have been vaccinated once do not need to be vaccinated again, Savoy said.

In the report, the ACIP clarified that the fourth dose of the childhood immunization combination for diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP), preferably given when the child is 15 months old, can be administered to children as young as 12 months as long as more than six months have gone by since the third dose was given.

Also, four-year-old children can be given a single dose of inactivated poliovirus vaccine so long as four weeks have passed since the final oral poliovirus vaccine dose was administered and the child has only received oral polio vaccines.

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