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  1. HHS
  2. Vaccines and Immunizations
  3. Featured Priorities
  4. Featured Priority: Vaccine Safety
  • Featured Priorities
    • Catch-Up Vaccination
    • Adult Immunization
    • Vaccine Confidence
    • Vaccine Innovation
    • Vaccine Safety

Featured Priority: Vaccine Safety

To ensure the ongoing success of vaccines, it's critical to continuously assess and strengthen vaccine safety efforts. We work with federal partners and non-federal stakeholders to support vaccine safety systems, surveillance, monitoring, and research.

Vaccine Safety in the United Sates: Background

Efforts to support and innovate around the vaccine safety system are the focus of the second goal of the Vaccines National Strategic Plan 2021–2025 (Vaccine Plan).
  • The second goal of the Vaccine Plan is to maintain the highest levels of vaccine safety and effectively communicate the strengths of the U.S. vaccine safety system to providers, policymakers, and the public.

To help meet this goal, the Vaccine Plan provides several objectives.

Goal 2: Maintain the highest levels of vaccine safety graphic.

Federal Efforts to Ensure Continued Support of Vaccine Safety

We support vaccine safety in a number of ways. For example, we:

  • Offer funding opportunities
  • Commission research and reviews of safety topics
  • Coordinate the Vaccine Safety Scientific Agenda
  • Lead the Immunization Safety Task Force
  • Assist federal agencies with research efforts
  • Work with international organizations to support vaccine safety around the world

Vaccine Safety Research

In May 2021, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) published an update, funded by the Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy, to a 2014 report that systematically reviewed evidence to assess the safety of vaccines in the immunization schedule recommended for children, adolescents, adults, and pregnant people. These reports built on the 2011 Institute of Medicine (IOM) consensus report Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality. The May 2021 report finds no new evidence of increased risk for key adverse events following administration of vaccines that are routinely recommended for adults, children, and pregnant women. Safety signals from the prior report remain unchanged for adverse events that include anaphylaxis in adults and children, and febrile seizures and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura in children. There continues to be no evidence of increased risk of adverse events for vaccines currently recommended in pregnant women.

Vaccine Safety Scientific Agenda

The Vaccine Safety Scientific Agenda outlines the efforts of federal agencies on vaccine safety—and the scientific activities and interagency coordination that contribute to the safety system.

Resources on Vaccine Safety

To learn more about vaccine safety in the United States, check out these National Vaccine Program-supported publications:

  • Kaiser Permanente Northern California Pregnancy Database: Description and Proof of Concept Study
  • Safety of Vaccines Used for Routine Immunization in the United States: An Update
  • Unique Safety Issues Associated with Virus-vectored Vaccines: Potential for and Theoretical Consequences of Recombination with Wild Type Virus Strains

You can also find more information in the following resources:

  • CDC Immunization Safety Office
  • CDC Publications on Vaccine Safety
  • Overview of Vaccine Safety Surveillance Systems
  • Strengthening the U.S. Vaccine and Immunization Enterprise: The Role of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee
Content created by Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy (OIDP)
Content last reviewed August 11, 2021
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