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For future podcast episodes.

Hey listeners, it's Lindsay Smith Rogers.

Today, as part of our series on vaccines, a look at the Vaccines for Children program.

Claire Hannan is the executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, and she joins the podcast to talk about the CDC program that provides recommended vaccines without charge to about half of the nation's children.

Let's listen.

Claire Hannan, thanks so much for being on public health on call. How are you today?

I'm good. I'm good. Thanks for having me. Sure. So let's start off by, can you tell us a little bit

about you and your background and what you do now? Sure. Well, I am executive director of the Association

of Immunization Managers. We are a nonprofit and we have members.

Our members are out in the state public health agencies running immunization programs.

I have been here for 20 years. So yeah, I have a lot of experience with immunization and

vaccine policy and have been just enjoying my career in public health.

Well, you are absolutely the person to ask about this topic. Today, we're talking about the

vaccines for children programs. So can you give us a little idea? Where did it come from? Who runs it?

How does it work? Let's start off with where it came from, how it started.

Sure. Well, back in 1989, 1990, 1991, I was in college. We had measles outbreaks in the United States,

and there were tens of thousands of cases, hundreds of deaths. And when the epidemic was investigated, the Centers for Disease Control found that more than half of the children who had measles had not been vaccinated. Even though

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