For Parents

Vaccine Philosophy Statement

Lincoln Pediatric Group in Lincoln, Nebraska

We at Lincoln Pediatric Group make the health and well-being of our patients, their families, our staff, and the surrounding community our top concern. 

Vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness and saving lives. 

Vaccines are safe.

We firmly believe that all children and young adults should receive ALL of the recommended vaccines according to the schedule published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

Vaccinating children and young adults is one of the most important health-promoting intervention we perform as health care providers, and that you can do as parents/caregivers. The recommended vaccines and their schedule are the results of years of scientific study and data-gathering on millions of children by thousands of our brightest scientists and physicians.

The vaccine campaign is truly a victim of its own success. Because of vaccines, many of you have never seen a child with polio, tetanus, whooping cough, bacterial meningitis, measles, or even chickenpox.  Almost all of you do not know a friend or family member whose child died of one of these diseases. Such success can make us complacent or even lazy about vaccinating. But such an attitude, if it becomes widespread, can only lead to tragic results.

Over the past several years, we have seen several significant outbreaks of vaccine preventable disease.  Whooping cough (pertussis) outbreaks affect the youngest of our population the worst – tiny babies cough for months on end and frequently end up hospitalized, turning blue because they cannot breathe during coughing fits, and can die from this illness.  Recently, widespread outbreaks of measles have been reported and more cases have been reported in 2019 than any year in the past 25 years. Measles is highly contagious – if someone who doesn’t yet know they are infected with measles coughs or sneezes in the aisle of the grocery store, everyone who walks through that aisle in the next 2 hours is likely to contract the disease. It can spread like wildfire, causing severe symptoms and even death. The MMR vaccine works very well and can prevent this. Many other serious vaccine preventable diseases are merely just a plane ride away, and undervaccination in the U.S. can lead to unnecessary outbreaks as we have already seen.

Furthermore, by not vaccinating your child you are taking advantage of thousands of others who do vaccinate their children, which decreases the likelihood that your child will contract one of these diseases.  You are also unnecessarily increasing the risk to those children and adults who cannot receive vaccines for true medical reasons or have compromised immune systems due to cancer or other illnesses.

We are making you aware of these facts not to scare you or coerce you, but to emphasize the importance of vaccinating your child. We recognize that the choice may be a very emotional one for some parents. That being said, vaccinating according to the schedule recommended by the CDC and AAP is the right thing to do. If you have doubts, please schedule a visit with your child’s doctor to discuss your concerns. 

We, the physicians of Lincoln Pediatric Group, expect that our patients will be vaccinated, receiving all recommended vaccines on schedule.  If you should choose not to vaccinate your child we will ask you to find another pediatrician more apt to meet your preferences.  We do not have a list of such providers, nor would we recommend any such physician. Please recognize that by not vaccinating you are putting your child at unnecessary risk for life-threatening illness and disability, and even death.

As medical professionals, we feel very strongly that vaccinating children on schedule with currently available vaccines is absolutely the right thing to do for all children and young adults.  Please feel free to schedule an appointment with a LPG physician to discuss any questions or concerns you may have about vaccines.  Also consider visiting these reliable and scientifically validated sources of information:

We thank you for the privilege of taking care of your children and look forward to providing the best possible care to your family..

Sincerely,

Lincoln Pediatric Group Physicians