Vaccination Matters: Help Protect Families from Whooping Cough is an initiative designed to reinforce the important role that family physicians play in helping keep the whole family healthy and protected from pertussis.

Pertussis vaccination is effective and has reduced the incidence of pertussis.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the AAFP recommend that adolescents and adults receive a single dose of tetanus toxoid, reduced diphtheria toxoid and acellular pertussis vaccine (Tdap) for continued protection against pertussis (whooping cough) if they have not been vaccinated with Tdap previously.

Evidence suggests that there is still a need to increase awareness of Tdap vaccination for adolescents and adults. For example, the CDC estimates that only 30 percent of 13-17 year-olds and 2.1 percent of adults in the U.S. have been vaccinated with Tdap.

Family physicians are ideally positioned to help protect their patients from this disease, since it affects all ages. As an organization that represents physicians who see and treat patients of all ages, the AAFP has made improving vaccination rates and protection from vaccine-preventable diseases like pertussis a priority for the organization and its physicians.

The resources include results from a survey of AAFP members, FPM and AFP articles about pertussis prevention and outbreak management, as well as patient education tools.

Later this year, the AAFP will be launching an exciting educational public awareness campaign for pertussis vaccination. AAFP will survey the general population to assess public knowledge of pertussis and pertussis vaccination. We will use the findings to develop information for patients.