Nolan Alexander (Host): Welcome to Long Live Childhood, the Pediatric Health and Wellness Podcast presented by Rady Children's Health. I'm Nolan Alexander and here to help us understand why childhood vaccines matter, is Dr. Eric Ball, a Rady Children's Pediatrician and Vice Chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics in California.

Eric, how are you doing today?

Eric Ball, MD: I'm great. Thanks so much for having me, Nolan.

Host: It's our pleasure and jumping right to it, why are vaccines such a critical part of a child's health from infancy through adolescence?

Eric Ball, MD: I think as pediatricians, the most important thing we do is preventative health. So we work with families on nutrition and education and exercise. The goal of our job is to produce healthy adults, and I think that one of the biggest ways that we could prevent disease is through vaccines.

Pediatrics has changed dramatically over the past 50 years, with the advent of most vaccines. The life expectancy of children has greatly advanced. And back in the day, upwards of 50% of children died in childhood, largely due to diseases that we now prevent from vaccines. So I think the most important thing that we do as pediatricians is we give our children vaccines and we protect them against diseases that used to be the scourge of childhood.

And now we don't see anymore.

Host: Is it really that drastic? Have numbers changed that much?

Eric Ball, MD: It is really dramatic. I mean, if you look back in history, like a lot of people used to have like 10 children because so many of them would die when they were young and they would die for things that we don't see anymore very much so they would die from tuberculosis or smallpox or measles or whooping cough or diptheria.

We don't encounter those diseases anymore because we vaccinate for them, and it's been a game-changer for health in this country and in the world, and I'm grateful for vaccines that my children were able to grow up healthy and that my parents vaccinated me and I didn't have to deal with any of those diseases when I was a child.

Host: Well, you may have already listed some Eric, but what serious illnesses do childhood vaccines prevent, and why are some of these diseases still a concern today?

Eric Ball, MD: Yeah, I mean they protect against so many diseases that used to cause a tremendous amount of death and disability in children. I'll just name a few. So we prevent two bacteria in early childhood, one called Hemophilus influenza type B and one called Pneumococcus. This is a vaccine that children receive starting at age two months.

Both of these bacteria, used to cause brain infection, so meningitis. Hemophilus influenza used to cause a very severe throat infection called epiglottitis. These used to be very common causes of death and disability in children. In fact, a large percentage of people who had acquired deafness, did so because they had damage from getting one of these diseases in childhood.

We don't see these very much anymore. I've been a pediatrician for about 25 years. These vaccines came out about five or 10 years before I started. So these are diseases that I have not seen, but the generation above me remembers these very well because they caused a lot of disability and death in their own patients.

Host: Eric, I'm sure you've had countless conversations with parents, and what do they often worry about most when it comes to vaccines and how do you address those concerns?

Eric Ball, MD: It's really hard out there to be a parent now. So vaccines are, in a way, a victim of their own success. We don't see these diseases much anymore because we vaccinate for them. You know, for example, we haven't seen a case of polio in the United States for decades. Whereas in my grandparents' generation, that was a very common cause of paralysis or severe disease.

So when we talk to parents about vaccinating for things such as polio or measles or diptheria, diseases that they don't see much anymore, there's some skepticism about the necessity of why do we need to vaccinate against a disease that doesn't exist. But the worry that we have is that these diseases do still exist and they will come back.

And the protection that we get as people and our children get and that our community gets from vaccines is at-risk the more people who don't vaccinate their kids. And we're starting to see this with measles. So every year our vaccination rates against measles have been declining, and now we're seeing more and more measles cases in the United States.

 In 2025, we saw two children die of measles, which was the first-time in decades that children in the United States have died from measles, which is completely preventable through vaccines. And this really scares me. I'm worried we're going to start seeing some of these other diseases such as diptheria, such as polio come back, and that's going to be devastating for our children. And I'm afraid we're going to start seeing kids die or be disabled. And as a pediatrician, that hurts me tremendously because I went into this field to keep kids healthy.

Host: So how do you go about those conversations right now with measles?

Eric Ball, MD: Yeah, it's hard. So we talk a lot with families about, number one, how I treated my own children. I have two children. They had all of their vaccines at all the right times. I talk about patients I've seen. I have seen kids with measles. I've seen how much they've suffered. I'm very aware of the complications of diseases like measles.

And I talk also about their own families. And how it's important not only to protect your child, but also to protect your family and your community. Every family has someone in their family who either cannot be vaccinated or has a weakened immune system because they have an autoimmune disease or they're too young or they have cancer. You want to protect them as best you can. And I think one of the ways we protect our families and our communities is by caring for each other and by vaccinating each other. So the vaccine that I gave my children against measles not only protected them so they'll never get measles, but it also protected, my grandparents and my neighbor down the street who has, leukemia or their classmates who had a heart transplant.

The fact that they will not get measles will protect the whole community. And I think that's an important part of my responsibility in society is not only to protect my own children, but also do what's best for my family and my community.

Host: Well, I'm very curious based on what you told us, of how much things have changed in how you work with patients and the positive numbers, right, for childhood livelihood and trajectory since you started, but looking ahead to the future, have there been any new developments or upcoming studies in childhood vaccinations that we should know about?

Eric Ball, MD: We actually haven't had a new vaccine added to the vaccine schedule outside of the COVID vaccine in almost 20 years. So my oldest child is almost 21. He got the same vaccines that all of my patients have had now. Which is good. I wish we would get more vaccines to protect kids against more different diseases, but, I think we have a lot of decades worth of data and experience about the safety and effectiveness of these vaccines.

So, the longer they're around, the more we know how much they're working. And I'll give you a quick example of a vaccine that both of my kids received when it was relatively new, which was a Rotavirus vaccine. So a rotavirus is a virus that causes a really bad stomach infection, vomiting, and diarrhea.

It used to be one of the leading causes of hospitalizing children in the United States because they would get dehydrated, they would need IV fluid, and a few of them would die every year. That vaccine's been out for almost 20 years now in the United States, I don't think I've hospitalized a child with rotavirus in that entire time, whereas the generation before me was probably hospitalizing a few kids a week with rotavirus.

So the fact that like just that one disease has benefited so much from one vaccine, there are kids alive now who would have died or been in the hospital because of rotavirus, which we don't see much anymore. Just goes to the success of vaccines and that's just a disease that causes vomiting and diarrhea.

There are things like polio that cause paralysis or diptheria, which is a bacteria which basically clogs up your throat and makes it impossible to breathe that we don't see anymore either. And that's been the wonderful case of vaccines.

Host: You've brought so much information to the table today. Is there anything else that you'd like to leave parents or grandparents listening to this podcast with?

Eric Ball, MD: Yeah. I think it's important to remember when you're making a decision about vaccinating your kids, that there's a lot of information out there right now, especially on social media, that's very confusing and it's very, very hard for a new parent now to make decisions based on a lot of conflicting data that they receive.

My job as a pediatrician is to be a voice of science and reason, and to cut through a lot of that data and help families to come to an informed decision which is best for their child. So I think when families are having questions about when to vaccinate their kids or whether to vaccinate them at all, I think it's important to get your information from a trusted source like your pediatrician rather than random people on the internet.

That's what we're there for. Our job is to sit down and have conversations to work with families on how they can make the best decision to keep their kids healthy. In this case, vaccinating your kids on time is the best way to keep your kids healthy. But if you have questions, please ask. That's why we're here.

Host: Well, that's wonderful and we've enjoyed this conversation and we look forward to our next one with you. Thank you so much for your time today.

Eric Ball, MD: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Host: That's Dr. Eric Ball and thank you for tuning in to Long Live Childhood, a pediatric health and wellness podcast, brought to you by Rady Children's Health. For more insightful conversations about kids health and wellbeing, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

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Until next time.