Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to VacciNation on ReachMD. On this episode, we’re joined by Dr. William Schaffner, who’s a Professor of Preventative Medicine and Health Policy as well as a Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville. He’ll be explaining why it’s important to counsel patients about meningitis B vaccination before they go to college. Let’s hear from Dr. Schaffner now.
Dr. Schaffner:
Young people, obviously, when they go to college, live together very closely for long periods of time. They room together, they study together, they socialize together, they have romantic relationships, they participate in athletic teams and extracurricular activities, they go out often to bars together, and they're very close. That's an ideal environment for meningococci, if they are in the throat of one person, to spread to others. And this acquisition, potentially, of a meningococcal infection in these circumstances, makes college a place where outbreaks of meningococcal disease can occur.
So actually, attending college is—we could almost think of it as—a risk factor for the acquisition of meningococcal infection, making it all the more important to get out in front of that before the young person goes off to college to make sure that they're optimally protected against all forms of meningococcal disease. As we approach the middle of adolescence and college looms in the future, we can start having these conversations so as to educate, prepare, parents and the adolescent for vaccination.
This is part of the discussion that we call shared clinical decision-making, and that gives the adolescent and the parents optimal time and repeated times to ask questions, inquire further, and become reassured and comfortable that this is a very good thing for the adolescent to do before they go off to college. This is also a time where there will be some parents who have inquired on their own about this and will come in and ask questions. And we should not be taken by surprise by these questions, because we do have a group of parents who are very, very knowledgeable, and they do their own research, as we all know.
Announcer:
That was Dr. William Schaffner talking about the importance of counseling patients on meningitis B vaccination before they go to college. To access this and other episodes in our series, visit VacciNation on ReachMD.com, where you can Be Part of the Knowledge. Thanks for listening!
