Disease prevention is key to your health. It is always better to prevent a disease than to treat it. Vaccines and immunizations prevent disease when you get them and also protect you from disease when you come in contact with individuals who are not immunized. They control many infectious diseases that were once very common in the US including polio, measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, German measles, mumps, and tetanus. Immunizations have saved millions of lives and prevented hundreds of millions of cases of diseases.
Why Childhood Immunizations Are Important
In the same way that car seats and bicycle helmets help to protect our children, vaccines and immunizations work to protect children from infectious diseases and the associated complications.
Young, unvaccinated children may not be physically strong enough to fight the disease so it is important that children are vaccinated. Before vaccinations for whooping cough, measles and polio, many young children died of these diseases. Although these same diseases exist today, children are now protected by vaccines so we don’t see the diseases as often.
Immunizing children also helps to protect the adults in their life and other children who may be too young to be vaccinated.
Scheduling Immunizations
You know you and/or your child needs immunizations. But when? Doctors have found that immunizations work best at certain ages because of a child’s developing immune system. That is why the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has developed schedules for immunizations.
Sometimes we forget that adults need immunizations as well, such as a Tetanus-diphtheria booster every ten years. Adult immunizations, like those we get as a child, help to protect us from disease.
You can access the schedules for children and adults on www.cdc.gov/vaccines.
Always discuss any concerns you may have about immunizations with your physician. Your physician can help you determine what is right for you and your family.
Your Service Benefit Plan Coverage
Both Standard and Basic Option provide benefits for immunizations for children and adults. For children, you pay nothing for the immunization and the associated office visit when you use a Preferred provider. You pay nothing for adult immunizations and the appropriate copayment under each option for the related office visit when you use a Preferred provider.
For more information about covered immunizations, please see Section 5(a) of the 2009 Service Benefit Plan brochure.