Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health- Institute for Vaccine Safety
The mission of the Institute for Vaccine Safety, which is part of the Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg School of Public Health, is to provide an independent assessment of vaccines and vaccine safety to help guide decision makers and educate physicians, the public and the media about key issues surrounding the safety of vaccines. The institute’s goal is to work toward preventing disease using the safest vaccines possible.
There are many resources on the IVS web page including information about specific VPD, vaccine safety issues, vaccine ingredients, autism spectrum disorder, religious perspectives, and many more.
Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a national early warning system to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines. VAERS accepts and analyzes reports of adverse events (possible side effects) after a person has received a vaccination. Anyone can report an adverse event to VAERS. Healthcare professionals are required to report certain adverse events and vaccine manufacturers are required to report all adverse events that come to their attention.
VAERS is a passive reporting system, meaning it relies on individuals to send in reports of their experiences to CDC and FDA. VAERS is not designed to determine if a vaccine caused a health problem, but is especially useful for detecting unusual or unexpected patterns of adverse event reporting that might indicate a possible safety problem with a vaccine. This way, VAERS can provide CDC and FDA with valuable information that additional work and evaluation is necessary to further assess a possible safety concern.
The VAERS website does provide for data searching through CDC Wonder as well as downloading of raw data.