Greg Metzger and a group of fellow University of Arizona medical students spend one morning a month making sure local kids get the vaccines they need.
The Tot Shots program is free to any child under the age of 18. In addition to offering free school-required immunizations, the Saturday morning walk-in clinic offers free HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccines, flu shots and sports physicals. A pediatric nurse practitioner or physician is always on site to supervise the clinic.
The next free clinic is 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, April 9, at the UAβs Family and Community Medicine Satellite Clinic, 1450 N. Cherry Ave, which is just west of Banner-University Medical Center Tucson. The clinics are held the second Saturday of every month.
Metzger, 27, is a second-year medical student and one of three Tot Shots coordinators. The Star spoke to him last week about vaccines and continued resistance from some parents to vaccinate their children. In Arizona preschool classes, the rate of children with non-medical vaccine exemptions excusing them from immunizations quadrupled between 2000 and 2013.
The following is an excerpt from the conversation with Metzger:
Who are you trying to reach with Tot Shots? Arenβt most kids already vaccinated at this stage in the school year?
You would think so, but sometimes parents get behind. Weβre really aimed at people who are underinsured or uninsured. The goal is to be kind of a one-stop shop for all their vaccines.
What we are finding is a lot of our patients need five or six vaccines at a time because their parents get behind and then they just donβt have the time to do it. And maybe they donβt know about the resources in the community like ours. That is one of the reasons we are trying to get the word out.
Sometimes itβs not that the parents donβt want their kids vaccinated β they are just not necessarily aware of the resources.
We see a lot of kids getting their sixth-grade shots. And HPV, the guidelines just changed for that so we are starting to vaccinate kids at age 11.
Why are you offering HPV? It isnβt required by schools.
That is one that wonβt always be covered by insurance.
The idea is getting it early before they become sexually active. Itβs a protective measure (for girls and boys, he stresses). The disease itself is very, very prevalent in the U.S.
Some parents are reluctant, but I think that is changing. Actually, a lot of parents are excited they can get this for their children as they see it as such a huge preventative.
What about parents who think vaccines are harmful?
Itβs great that parents are becoming more interested in researching health and wellness using the Internet and other resources to kind of empower themselves and make informed decisions. But itβs also dangerous because there is so much misinformation out there.
There are so many improvements that vaccines are responsible for. If you look at the major causes of death in the early 1900s or late 1800s for children, it was all infectious diseases. Now infections donβt even account for one of the top three causes of death for children.
There was some research that happened that was trying to show a link between autism and vaccines, but it has really been debunked and denied by the science community.
Is Tot Shots part of a medical student organization?
Thereβs a program through the medical school called the Commitment to Underserved People (CUP). Itβs honestly one of the great things about our medical school and a reason why a lot of students want to come here.
Itβs such an amazing program with all these student-run initiatives that provide services to the community. Tot Shots falls under one of those programs.
Are the clinics every month?
Our goal this year has been to do consistent monthly events the same second Saturday, same location and same time. We saw it as being important because a lot of kids will need a second and third round of shots. We wanted to make something consistent so that they werenβt guessing on when we were going to be open.
