National Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

Get Recommended Screening Tests and Immunizations

• What's Important to Know?
• Want to Know More?
• Resources

Recommendations for preventive services depend on your age, sex, health status, and family history. Find out which screening tests and immunizations are recommended for you.

What's Important to Know?

It is important to keep up with your screening tests and immunizations to prevent certain kinds of illness. Recommendations for preventive services depend on your age, sex, health status, and family history—every person is different.

All preventive services have possible benefits (pros) and harms (cons). Depending on your values and preferences about these benefits and harms, you may wish to receive additional, fewer, or different services from those that are recommended. Talk with your health care team about the recommendations for screening tests and immunizations that are right for you.

Screening means looking for a condition before there are any signs or symptoms of that condition. If you already have a symptom of the condition, you should talk with your provider about it, even if you were recently screened and no problem was found.

Regardless of age, gender, health status and family history, most Veterans should be screened for alcohol abuse, depression, high blood pressure, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), military sexual trauma, obesity, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and tobacco use.

Veterans should follow the appropriate cancer screening guidelines. Most Veterans should receive a flu shot every year and a tetanus shot once every 10 years.

If you are a woman who is considering pregnancy, it is important to check with your health care team to be sure you are up-to-date with immunizations.

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Want to Know More?

If you want to learn more about getting recommended screening tests and immunizations, talk with your VA health care team. They can also help if you have questions about making a healthy living change.

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Resources

• Visit www.prevention.va.gov for recommended screening tests for men and women under the resource section.
• Veterans Health Library:
  https://www.veteranshealthlibrary.va.gov
• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Healthfinder:
  https://healthfinder.gov/myhealthfinder/
• U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – Adult Immunization Schedule:
  www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/easy-to-read/adult.html

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