The Connecticut Department of Public Health is promoting the message that vaccines are safe and effective with a new video series inspired by classic children's television.
The campaign, called "Protect Who Matters Most," features chirpy animated characters who encounter infections in their environments, but fight them off with help from vaccines. The videos have an upbeat soundtrack, taking a page from the iconic "Schoolhouse Rock!" series of educational cartoons from the 1970s and 1980s.
Timed to roll out ahead of back-to-school season, the educational messages teach how vaccines work: The body recognizes threats by getting a preview from vaccines, preventing illness or easing the severity.
"Every parent wants to make the best decisions for their child's health, and that starts with having access to clear, accurate information,” Dr. Manisha Juthani, the state's public health commissioner, said in an announcement. “Protect Who Matters Most is designed to encourage meaningful conversations between families and their health care providers, helping parents feel informed and confident in the decisions they make when it comes to vaccines.”
Dr. Richard Martinello, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at the Yale School of Medicine, said this kind of public messaging is urgently needed.
“We're in a very difficult situation right now, where people are exposed to a lot of mixed messages that they're hearing about vaccination," Martinello said. "And I think the important thing that we need to do … is to respond with fact and to call out misinformation or disinformation when we see it happening.”
More than 98% of kindergartners in the state are immunized against measles, mumps and rubella, according to state data, in contrast with falling MMR vaccination rates nationally, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Experts consider a threshold of 95% and above to create herd immunity among populations to measles, a highly contagious disease.
“We've seen substantial outbreaks in West Texas, in South Carolina, and while we've had some introduction of measles into the state of Connecticut, we have not yet seen outbreaks,” Martinello said. “Some of what protects us is having these high vaccination rates among not only our students, but really everybody here in the state of Connecticut.”
