Vaccines & Infectious Diseases

“To improve the health of our communities we are comprehensively evaluating the safety and effectiveness of vaccines in current use, conducting clinical trials of promising new vaccines, and studying the patterns of infectious diseases in our population.”

Lisa A. Jackson, MD, MPH
Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute Senior Investigator

Research overview

Vaccines save lives by protecting people against infectious diseases—polio, influenza, and malaria to name a few. Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI) is working to protect communities through research to continually improve the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and other treatments for infectious diseases as well as cancer. We also test new vaccines that may stop the threat of emerging diseases such as the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which causes COVID-19.

Our research projects on vaccines and infectious diseases include:

clinical trials conducted by the Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit, funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Led by KPWHRI Senior Investigator and Washington Permanente Medical Group physician Lisa A. Jackson, MD, MPH, this unit launched the world’s first trial of an experimental candidate vaccine against COVID-19 in March 2020;
studies of how infectious diseases such as COVID-19 and influenza spread through communities;
ongoing monitoring of influenza vaccine effectiveness by the U.S. Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness Network, led by Michael L. Jackson, PhD, MPH, KPWHRI associate investigator, and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); and
studies of immunization safety through the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) Project, supported by the CDC and connecting information in large databases maintained by 8 American health plans including Kaiser Permanente Washington.

Successes over 3 decades of KPWHRI research on vaccines and preventing and treating infectious disease include:

a large study of flu vaccination in seniors that found that the vaccine might not protect them from pneumonia as well as hoped;
a “real-time” evaluation of the safety of the new shingles vaccine in older adults across the VSD network;
clinical trials of investigational flu vaccines, including ones against pandemic flu and bird flu, in adults;
studies to better understand and address “vaccine hesitancy” among families who delay or refuse vaccinating their children because of safety fears, leading to outbreaks of potentially deadly outbreaks of illnesses such as whooping cough and measles.
the biggest retrospective study of pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine effectiveness in adults and the largest clinical trial on the safety of this vaccine; and
the pivotal clinical trials of 7-valent, 13-valent, and 20-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccines in older adults.

Recent publications on Vaccines & Infectious Disease

Friedmann PD, Abraham A, Evans E, Glass J, Ilgen M, Montgomery L. Editorial: COVID-19 and its impact on SUD treatment. J Subst Abuse Treat. 2020 Oct;117:108091. doi: 10.1016/j.jsat.2020.108091. PubMed

Anderson EJ, Rouphael NG, Widge AT, Jackson LA, Roberts PC, Makhene M, Chappell JD, Denison MR, Stevens LJ, Pruijssers AJ, McDermott AB, Flach B, Lin BC, Doria-Rose NA, O'Dell S, Schmidt SD, Corbett KS, Swanson PA 2nd, Padilla M, Neuzil KM, Bennett H, Leav B, Makowski M, Albert J, Cross K, Edara VV, Floyd K, Suthar MS, Martinez DR, Baric R, Buchanan W, Luke CJ, Phadke VK, Rostad CA, Ledgerwood JE, Graham BS, Beigel JH; mRNA-1273 Study Group. Safety and immunogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-1273 vaccine in older adults. N Engl J Med. 2020 Dec 17;383(25):2427-2438. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2028436. Epub 2020 Sep 29. PubMed

Panagiotakopoulos L, Myers TR, Gee J, Lipkind HS, Kharbanda EO, Ryan DS, Williams JTB, Naleway AL, Klein NP, Hambidge SJ, Jacobsen SJ, Glanz JM, Jackson LA, Shimabukuro TT, Weintraub ES. SARS-CoV-2 infection among hospitalized pregnant women: reasons for admission and pregnancy characteristics - eight U.S. health care centers, March 1-May 30, 2020 MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2020;69(38):1355-1359. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm6938e2. PubMed

Jackson ML. Low-impact social distancing interventions to mitigate local epidemics of SARS-CoV-2. Microbes Infect. 2020 Sep 22:S1286-4579(20)30159-3. doi: 10.1016/j.micinf.2020.09.006. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed

Rogers JH, Link AC, McCulloch D, Brandstetter E, Newman KL, Jackson ML, Hughes JP, Englund JA, Boeckh M, Sugg N, Ilcisin M, Sibley TR, Fay K, Lee J, Han P, Truong M, Richardson M, Nickerson DA, Starita LM, Bedford T, Chu HY. Characteristics of COVID-19 in homeless shelters: a community-based surveillance study. Ann Intern Med. 2020 Sep 15. doi: 10.7326/M20-3799. Online ahead of print. PubMed