Grant: Operating Grant

Influenza epidemics continue to pose an important threat to the health of persons over the age of 65 years, as well as to persons with cardiopulmonary and other high risk conditions. Healthy children are felt to be an important source for community transmission of influenza. Immunizing school-aged children has been proposed as one strategy to protect high risk individuals; by immunizing children spread of influenza is prevented and persons at high risk for complications are protected. There is uncertainty however about whether a live attenuated vaccine (LAIV) offers additional benefit over inactivated trivalent influenza vaccine (TIV) in providing indirect benefit to those who are unvaccinated through herd immunity. The goal of this randomized clinical trial is to determine whether immunizing children in Hutterite colonies with LAIV can provide increased community-wide protection over TIV.