I'm Dr. Mara Gordon and this is NPR's life kit.

I'm a family physician and this fall all my patients are asking me about vaccines.

They want to understand what they're hearing in the news about a COVID-19 vaccine.

They've got questions about the flu shot. They want to make sure their kids are up to date on

their childhood vaccines. Vaccines are on the brain.

Our team here at Life Kit cannot predict the future of a vaccine for COVID.

Nobody can. But we don't want you to forget about all of your regular shots.

They could save your life. Yeah, I think vaccines are one of the great achievements of mankind and

everybody, the World Health Organization and other experts have said that it's one of the

few things that has really helped to decrease morbidity in the world.

That's Dr. Melissa Martinez. She's going to answer the most common questions about routine

immunizations. Those are the regular vaccines that help keep you and your kids safe.

This episode, Vaccines 101.

Dr. Melissa Martinez is a family physician and a professor at the University of New Mexico.

I did some advanced study on immunization with the American Academy of Family Physicians

and I serve on the National Vaccine Advisory Committee where I'm a co-chair on the subcommittee

on vaccine equity. Dr. Martinez loves vaccines. But when she was a young mother, she was a skeptic.

But I looked at the evidence. I looked at the science behind vaccines and I realized

that by getting my children vaccinated, I was protecting them, but I was also protecting all the

other children in their community that they were around and that their chances of getting

ill was really from the vaccine was really pretty slim, whereas their chances of getting ill from

some of these diseases that we protect against is high. What I tell parents and other people is that

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