Whooping Cough Vaccination Paper

As a healthcare worker I have been tasked with explaining basic epidemiologic concepts to parents of school aged children at Fallsburg Elementary. This conversation will include explaining which students are and are not at risk, as well as explaining the difference between incidence and prevalence. One of the significant factors that I want to key in on is health education, and fully explaining the importance of the whooping cough vaccination. This should lead to more buy-in from the parents and in turn increase the vaccination rates for students. This begins with a very basic explanation of what epidemiology is.
A simple overview of epidemiology and its basic concepts is the first step to health education. First, what is epidemiology
By explaining this, along with some statistics of whooping cough I believe that the parents of the unvaccinated children will understand the importance of the vaccination. So, incidence versus prevalence and a practical breakdown of how it impacts both groups of children is the first step. The prevalence of unvaccinated children getting whooping cough will be nearly higher than the children who have been vaccinated. While the incidence will be higher as well because the 35 unvaccinated children will potentially be the ‘new cases’ of whooping cough within that community. While there is a possibility that a vaccinated child can still develop whooping cough, the symptoms and mortality rate will be much lower. In fact, prior to the 1950’s the mortality rate for children with whooping cough was nearly 9 deaths for every 200 reported cases. Whereas now, the rates are as low as one death for every 2000 cases reported (CDC, 2015). That’s a significant decrease in the incidence and the mortality rate. Since epidemiology is facts and numbers driven, it’s hard to ignore those numbers. Again, I believe that educating these parents is the key to increasing vaccinations and reducing the prevalence of whooping