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

Yu W, Zheng C, Xie F, Chen W, Mercado C, Sy LS, Qian L, Glenn S, Tseng HF, Lee G, Duffy J, McNeil MM, Daley MF, Crane B, McLean HQ, Jackson LA, Jacobsen SJ. The use of natural language processing to identify vaccine-related anaphylaxis at five health care systems in the Vaccine Safety Datalink. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2019 Dec 3. doi: 10.1002/pds.4919. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed

Donahue JG, Kieke BA, Lewis EM, Weintraub ES, Hanson KE, McClure DL, Vickers ER, Gee J, Daley MF, DeStefano F, Hechter RC, Jackson LA, Klein NP, Naleway AL, Nelson JC, Belongia EA. Near real-time surveillance to assess the safety of the 9-valent human papillomavirus vaccine. Pediatrics. 2019;144(6). pii: peds.2019-1808. doi: 10.1542/peds.2019-1808. Epub 2019 Nov 18. PubMed

Flannery B, Kondor RJG, Chung JR, Gaglani M, Reis M, Zimmerman RK, Nowalk MP, Jackson ML, Jackson LA, Monto AS, Martin ET, Belongia EA, McLean HQ, Kim SS, Blanton L, Kniss K, Budd AP, Brammer L, Stark TJ, Barnes JR, Wentworth DE, Fry AM, Patel M. Spread of antigenically drifted influenza A(H3N2) viruses and vaccine effectiveness in the United States during the 2018-2019 season. J Infect Dis. 2020 Jan 1;221(1):8-15. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiz543. PubMed

Donahue JG, Kieke BA, King JP, Mascola MA, Shimabukuro TT, DeStefano F, Hanson KE, McClure DL, Olaiya O, Glanz JM, Hechter RC, Irving SA, Jackson LA, Klein NP, Naleway AL, Weintraub ES, Belongia EA. Inactivated influenza vaccine and spontaneous abortion in the Vaccine Safety Datalink in 2012-13, 2013-14, and 2014-15. Vaccine. 2019;37(44):6673-6681. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.09.035. Epub 2019 Sep 17. PubMed

Opel DJ, Henrikson N, Lepere K, Hawkes R, Zhou C, Dunn J, Taylor JA. Previsit screening for parental vaccine hesitancy: a cluster randomized trial. Pediatrics. 2019 Nov;144(5). pii: e20190802. doi: 10.1542/peds.2019-0802. Epub 2019 Oct 9. PubMed