Vaccination programs for infants and children in the United States have made huge inroads against many childhood diseases, and public health experts are hoping to replicate this success with vaccines targeted at adults. “Vaccine-preventable diseases have been virtually eliminated in childhood populations,” Vanderbilt University infectious diseases expert William Schaffner said in July at a National Foundation for Infectious Diseases symposium on infectious diseases in Washington, D.C. “This has led us to think about adult immunization in a much more targeted fashion than it has been in the past,” Schaffner added. Until recently, vaccination recommendations for adults have been mostly limited to a periodic tetanus-and-diphtheria (Td) booster, an annual influenza vaccination for those at high risk for flu-related complications, and a dose of the pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine for people age 65 years or older. Health care workers and others at high risk for exposure to hepatitis B are also advised to undergo the three-dose hepatitis B vaccine series.
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Kate Traynor (2006) studied this question.