Letter from the Editor

Abstract

We are delighted to present a Special Focus on Vaccines for Emerging Diseases Guest-Edited by Dr. Joel Maslow of Gene One Life Science.Wewelcome you to learnmore about the papers in this Special Focus in the Editorial Overview (Maslow, p 2230). Next, the Licensed Vaccines section introduces trends in vaccine investment in middle-income countries (Onishchenko, p 2378), a Phase 3 trial investigating the safety of RTS,S/AS01 malaria vaccine in children in sub-Saharan Africa (Guerra Mendoza, p 2386), analysis of sexand birth weight-dependent risks of health-care utilization following whole-cell pertussis vaccination (Hawken, p 2399), and a meeting report from the 9 interactive infectious disease workshop (Martinón-Torres, p 2405). Four articles on Influenza include surveys of vaccination status among caregivers of the elderly in Italy (Bonaccorsi, p 2416), attitudes and behaviors of French nurses (Wilson, p 2423) and Italian dialysis patients (Battistella, p 2434), and a commentary on epidemic preparedness through local vaccine production (Pitisuttithum, p 2440). Three research articles onAcceptance present a questionnaire to assess the development of motivational interviewing skills for vaccine promotion (Gagneur, p 2446), analysis of vaccine reporting in the print media (Catalan-Matamoros, p 2453), and a study of parental and provider influences on HPV and meningococcal vaccine uptake (Eun, p 2460). Two research studies on Novel Vaccines evaluate immune responses in older adults to an adjuvanted RSV vaccine (Weinberg, p 2466) and a risk score for the prediction of Clostridium difficile infections (Marley, p 2475). Finally, we present a product review of vedolizumab for Immunotherapy of inflammatory bowel disease (Battat, p 2482), a review of complement use for standardization of serum bactericidal antibody assays to evaluate the immunogenicity of Meningococcal vaccines (Findlow, p 2491), and a Letter to the Editor on a possible link between HPV vaccine introduction and birth-rate change (Shibata, p 2501) with a Response Letter (DeLong, p 2503). Our monthly News, Policy and Profiles (NP&P) track offers a selection of the latest news in the field of vaccines and immunotherapeutics. In this section we also regularly publish opinion pieces on timely, interesting and controversial topics related to vaccines and immunotherapeutics, profiles of companies and organizations, as well as portraits of distinguished scientists in our field. Please contact Acquisitions Editor Adam Weiss ([email protected]) with your ideas for commentaries, opinion pieces, profiles and portraits. Your suggestions for and contributions to our N&P&P track are always welcome!