IOM issues review of national vaccine strategy

Reuters: To strengthen U.S. national vaccine strategy, the country "needs to establish a permanent group that advises the government on vaccine safety and spend more money to address safety concerns about vaccines," according to a report released Friday by the Institute of Medicine. The IOM's report is based on a review of the HHS National Vaccine Plan, "which sets the national agenda for protecting Americans from vaccine-preventable illness," the news service writes. Report authors "said the revised plan also should include a strategy to speed the development of high-priority vaccines, and expand funding for safety research and monitoring -- including the development of a national communications strategy to bolster public confidence in vaccines" (Steenhuysen, 12/11).

HealthDay/U.S. News & World Report: The plan also called for researchers to work together on the development of a single vaccine that would offer protection against all types of influenza. "Currently, vaccine development is left to the interests of individual researchers, rather than a central committee, and improved coordination is essential, the report notes. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention needs more resources to develop a research agenda, it says" (Reinberg, 12/11).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.