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When someone mentions immunizations, it can bring to mind memories of the pediatrician’s office and a nurse telling you “this is only going to hurt for a second.”

Our health system focuses primarily on infants and children when it comes to vaccinations.

Adult vaccination is an important health topic that rarely receives the attention it deserves. The Society for Women’s Health Research held a briefing on Capitol Hill on October 7 to educate legislators and the public about the challenges in adult vaccines and new research in the field.

A survey of pediatricians found wide variation in whether and how they would disclose medical errors to patients and their families, and may be less likely to share information about errors that are less obvious to parents, according to a report in the October issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Parents want to be told when an error occurs in their child’s care, but such disclosure does not always occur, according to background information in the article. “Disclosing an error to one or both parents, and possibly to the child as well, may prove to be an exceptionally challenging conversation,” the authors write.

In a survey conducted by David J. Loren, M.D., of the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, and colleagues, 205 pediatricians (out of 369, a 56 percent response rate) answered 11 questions about one of two scenarios. In the first, the pediatrician administered an overdose of insulin that resulted in the child’s admission to the intensive care unit—an error deemed apparent to the family. The second scenario involved failure to follow up on a child’s laboratory test, which resulted in an infection and hospitalization. This error was considered less obvious to parents.

The National Children’s Study, the largest study ever conducted to learn about the health and development of children, is expanding its footprint in the St. Louis area.

Children from Jefferson County in Missouri and Johnson, Union and Williamson counties in southern Illinois will be among 100,000 children across the nation who researchers will follow from before birth to age 21 to learn more about environmental and genetic influences on diseases.

As the lead study site, Saint Louis University School of Public Health received a $26.3 million contract from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.