Back-to-school vaccines for teens, tweens

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Backpack. Notebooks. Whooping-cough shot?

If you haven’t worried about back-to-school shots since your tween or teen was entering kindergarten, better put vaccines on the to-do list.

Older kids need a few new immunizations starting at age 11, including a shot to guard against the worrisome resurgence of whooping cough. And for the first time this year, 16-year-olds are supposed to get a booster shot, too, for a scary type of meningitis.

Many slip through the cracks. One reason: Schools don’t require adolescents to comply with a list of national vaccine recommendations like they do kindergarteners.

Another reason: “Kids this age go to the doctor much less,” says Dr. Melinda Wharton of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who had to scramble to get her own daughter that meningitis shot before she headed to college.

“This whole back-to-school push is a good time for parents to think ... in terms of what vaccines are recommended.”

But when it comes to whooping cough, a growing number of states are requiring updated shots as students enter middle school and beyond. A new California law requires a staggering 3 million students to show proof they’re protected as they head back to class.

“It is that kind of effort that’s going to help us stem the outbreaks,” says Dr. Mark Sawyer of the University of California, San Diego.

Aside from an annual flu vaccine, here are federal recommendations for preteens and teens:

A Tdap shot between age 11 and 12. It protects against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis or whooping cough — and the latter is key as the cough that’s so strong it can break a rib is on the rise. A first dose of what’s called meningococcal conjugate vaccine between age 11 and 12, with a booster dose at 16.

Finally for girls age 11 to 12, there’s the HPV vaccine for strains of human papillomavirus that can cause cervical cancer. The idea is to start the three doses needed early enough to be fully vaccinated well before the girl becomes sexually active. In 2009, only 27 percent of girls age 13 to 17 had gotten all three doses.

A vaccine version is sold for boys to prevent HPV-caused genital warts, although CDC hasn’t yet recommended its routine use.

Wharton’s final advice: Adolescence is a good time to catch up on any shots that were recommended after your child started kindergarten and thus missed, such as the second dose of chickenpox vaccine that became routine for the 5-year-old set just a few years ago.