Resources for Understanding: Immunization
August is National Immunization Awareness Month, and there are many publicly available resources to learn about immunization. Explore the history of immunization and present-day information on vaccine coverage around the world through interactive slideshows and exhibits, data visualizations, maps, eBooks, videos and documentaries curated by the Blaisdell Medical Library team.
Publicly Available Resources
Overview of Immunization
Medline: Vaccines and Immunization
This public site provides an overview of immunization. Includes term definitions, lists of types of vaccines, explains the step-by-step vaccination process, and provides additional information on immunization during childhood, pregnancy, and older age. Links to external sources with more information are also included.
Medline: Vaccines and Immunization for children
This public site is similar to the one above, but is focused on the vaccination process for children.
American Academy of Pediatrics: Immunization
This organization’s website provides information on vaccination schedules and vaccination data.
Interactive Resources
Lifeology Courses: Vaccines
This public site offers interactive, visual slideshows on vaccination overall, as well as various available vaccines. Lifeology also has slideshows on other health topics.
American Academy of Pediatrics: Interactive Vaccination Map
This map includes vaccination rates and exemptions by state in the United States.
History of Immunization
WHO: A Brief History of Vaccination
This article explores major diseases and attempts to treat them from the 1500s to present. Images of patients, scientists, and doctors involved in treating these diseases are included. Diseases include smallpox, polio and the Spanish influenza.
Google Arts and Culture: A Brief History of Vaccination
This interactive online exhibit was a collaborative project created by forty-four museums, libraries, hospitals, and organizations around the world. View a list of the collaborators here.
Google Arts and Culture: History of Influenza Vaccination
This interactive online exhibit explores the history of influenza vaccinations and includes images from LIFE and WHO public collections.
Information is Beautiful: Vaccines and Autism
This data visualization piece by David McCandless navigates the evidence available on the link between vaccines and autism and presents the evidence and data in graphs and other visual displays. The data and evidence is linked on this webpage.
Immunization Today
WHO: Available vaccines
This webpage from the World Health Organization website provides a list of available vaccines for diseases worldwide here. Summary information and WHO policies are also available for each linked disease.
WHO: Immunization coverage
This webpage from the World Health Organization website provides information on present-day vaccination coverage around the world. Find trajectories for future coverage, disparities across different countries, and information on specific diseases.
UC Davis eBooks and Videos
- Tizard, Ian R. Vaccines for Veterinarians. Elsevier, 2021.
- Tizard, Ian R. A History of Vaccines and Their Opponents. Academic Press, an imprint of Elsevier, 2023.
- Orenstein, Walter A., et al., editors. Plotkin’s Vaccines. 8th edition., Elsevier, 2024.
- Burg, Sjoerd Henricus van der. Cancer Vaccines as Immunotherapy of Cancer. Edited by Luigi Buonaguro, Academic Press, 2022.
- Oshinsky, David M. Polio : An American Story. 1st ed., Oxford University Press, 2005.
Documentaries
All available to watch online through the library’s Kanopy license.
Decoding COVID-19 (2020, 53min)
“How do you stop a contagious killer microbe? Scientists around the globe are racing to uncover the secrets of the coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic–and using revolutionary techniques to develop lifesaving treatments and vaccines.”
Paralyzing Fear, narrated by Olympia Dukakis (2012, (2012), 1hr 29min)
“…few know the story of how polio came to America in 1916 and grew into the frightening epidemics of the 1940’s and 50’s when the disease crippled tens of thousands of children every summer. Led by a president crippled by the virus himself, the battle against polio was the first, and perhaps the most successful, fight against a disease.
This fascinating story is told here using thousands of photographs and films along with interviews with polio survivors, their families, nurses, doctors, and community leaders, bringing to life an America that was both brave and innocent – when people believed in scientists, government, and the power of every person in the fight to protect the children.” Emmy award winner for Best Documentary Film Research.
Cuba’s Cancer Hope (2020, 53min)
“When the U.S. trade embargo left Cuba isolated from medical resources, Cuban scientists were forced to get creative. Now they’ve developed lung cancer vaccines that show so much promise, some Americans are defying the embargo and traveling to Cuba for treatment. In an unprecedented move, Cuban researchers are working with U.S. partners to make the medicines more widely available.”