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1991.09.20 :  Dallas Childhood Immunization Plan

Contacts: Bill Grigg (PHS) 202/245-6867 
          Don Berreth (CDC) 404/639-3286
September 20, 1991

       DALLAS, Texas -- HHS Secretary Louis W. Sullivan, M.D.,
today joined in unveiling the Dallas area's early childhood
immunization plan -- the first of six community plans that are
part of an across-the-nation effort to ensure children are fully
immunized not just by school age but by age 2.
       Secretary Sullivan said, "We want to protect our youngest
and most vulnerable citizens against eight preventable diseases
which can cripple, impair and kill -- diphtheria, tetanus,
pertussis or whooping cough, polio, measles, mumps, rubella or
German measles, and bacterial meningitis.  
       "As a nation whose health care systems are stretched to
the limit, we can't afford NOT to immunize.  For every $1 spent
on measles, mumps and rubella immunizations, for example, $14 in
later costs are saved."
       The Dallas plan is part of a response to an outbreak of
measles that produced 27,600 cases and 89 deaths in 1990. 
President Bush announced the plan to focus additional activity in
six areas in a meeting with immunization experts June 13, asking
federal experts to work with six representative cities "to solve
the problem of late immunization."

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    The Dallas plan focuses on making immunization "user 
friendly" by providing the services available at convenient places
and on evenings and weekends.  It relaxes strict appointment
policies, uses "express lane" clinic and mobile immunization teams,
provides immunization in emergency rooms (where many low-income
children get much of their care), reaches parents when they are
applying for federal and state assistance and expands the role of
private medical providers.
    HHS Assistant Secretary for Health James O. Mason, M.D., who
heads the Public Health Service, said, "We as a nation do a great
job in getting our kids immunized by the time they go to school --
partly because many school systems require it.  But the outbreak of
measles shows our kids are vulnerable to fast-moving, potentially
crippling epidemics because we are not reaching our children early
enough -- in five visits to doctors or clinics before they are 2
years old."
    Federal experts this summer have been assisting the six focus
communities -- Phoenix, Rapid City (South Dakota), Detroit, San
Diego and Philadelphia, as well as Dallas -- in developing their
early immunization plans, of which Dallas' is the first to be
announced.
    Dr. Sullivan, Dr. Mason and other health officials will visit
the other five cities in the coming weeks to launch their plans as
well.
 
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