**Cited sources are marked with a “(1)”, “(2)”, “(3)”, “(4)”, or “(5)” at the end of each paragraph to indicate which source was referenced.
Article 1: Research Plan DDP: Scientists and organizations who contributed to this experiment include all of the following: Julia E. Painter, Jessica M. Sales, Karen Pazol, Gina M. Wingood, Michael Windle Walter A. Orenstein, Ralph J. DiClemente, Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, Rollins School of Public Health and Emory Vaccine Center. (1)
Explanation of DDP: Influenza kills over thirty thousand people each year, and ten percent of that is kids in grade school. In response to this, public schools in the United States have been considering starting up vaccination programs to prevent kids from catching the influenza virus. An experiment in Georgia concluded that kids that receive the vaccination from their schools attract more kids to get the vaccinations also, thus, preventing more cases of the flu among the tweens and teens. Vaccination stations in schools, pre-flu season and post-flu season is a great idea and can improve the health standard of public schools across the country. (1,4)
Strengths: Though this experiment could use some minor improvements, they conducted it very well. They were consistent and accurate in their results from the two groups of kids from the two counties, using the same amount of vaccination, same type of vaccination that targets the same strand of influenza. They waited an equal amount of time for each group of kids to record results and give them the second vaccination. (1)
Weaknesses: Despite the amount of success this experiment had, they could’ve been one or two things they could’ve done differently to improve their results and get a stronger conclusion. First off, they only used groups of kids from 2 different counties, which does not seem like a large enough focus group to use for this kind of experiment that would affect an entire country full of kids that go to public schools. Using only a hundred kids (more or less) to represent the several hundreds, if not millions, of kids that go to public schools across the country. A larger focus group is the only mistake in this experiment. This leaves a lot of area to question how effective it would actually be if all the public schools in the country set up vaccination stations. (1)
Article 2: Research DDP:
Scientists and organizations who contributed to this experiment include all of the following: Kevin J. Dombkowski, Anne E. Cowan, Rachel C. Potter, Shiming Dong, Maureen Kolasa, and Sarah J. Clark. (2)
Explanation of DDP: The influenza pandemic of 2009 caused over oen million cases in the United States alone. They came to the conclusion that there are five main groups of people that are at a very high risk of catching the flu virus… one of those categories being children. They also concluded that deaths in children from this disease are more common if the child has one or more chronic diseases. The MCIR provided vaccinations for the kids of America, but they mainly targeted kids that were at higher risk, those with chronic diseases, even more specifically, children under the age of six. They sent out a vaccination reminder to parents of children, urging them to get their influenza vaccinations if they haven’t already. Over two hundred and two thousands more children than average in Michigan have received their flu vaccinations. (2,4,5)
Strengths: There are many strengths to this experiment, it was conducted very well. It was very interesting that they focused on kids under the age of 6, and another focus group was kids under the age of 6 with one or more chronic diseases. They were able to
