At Pediatric Professional Associates, we believe in vaccinations. While we respect your beliefs and opinions, if you have chosen not to vaccinate your child, Pediatric Professional Associates is not the right practice for you. <\/strong><\/p>\n We firmly believe in the effectiveness of vaccines to prevent serious illness and to save lives. We firmly believe in the safety of our vaccines. It is our policy that all children and young adults should receive all the recommended vaccines according to the schedule published by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control (in Atlanta).<\/p>\n We also believe that vaccinating our patients may be the single most important health-promoting intervention that we perform as pediatricians and that you consent to as parents. Because of the success of the vaccine program in our country, most of you have never seen a child with polio, tetanus, diphtheria, bacterial meningitis, measles, or even chickenpox. We must continue to be diligent about vaccinating our children to protect them against these serious diseases.<\/p>\n Some parents have expressed concern in recent years about the possible connection between vaccines and autism. All of the recently published studies have shown there is no relation between vaccines and autism or developmental disorders. Delaying or \u201cbreaking up the vaccines\u201d to give one or two at a time over two or more visits goes against expert recommendations and offers no medical benefit.<\/p>\n As medical professionals, we feel strongly that vaccinating children on schedule with currently available vaccines is absolutely the right thing to do for our patients. If you do have questions or concerns about vaccines, please feel free to discuss them with any of our doctors. In addition, there are some excellent resources for up-to-date vaccine information listed on our website.<\/p>\n