Location Washington, D.C., U.S. Founder Rosalynn Carter Type Nonprofit organization | Website www.ecbt.org Founded 1991 | |
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Focus Public understanding of vaccinations Method Education, outreach, and advocacy Key people Rosalynn Carter, Betty Bumpers Similar National Vaccine Informatio, Generation Rescue, Gavi - The Vaccine Alliance, College of Physicians of Philad, American Academy of Pediatr | ||
Every Child By Two (ECBT) is a non-profit health advocacy organization, based in the United States and founded in 1991, dedicated to protecting children from diseases through the promotion of vaccinations and raising parental awareness of potential vaccine benefits. The stated goals of ECBT are to "raise awareness of the critical need for timely immunizations and to foster a systematic way to immunize all of America's children by age two." ECBT was founded by former First Lady of the United States, Rosalynn Carter, and former First Lady of Arkansas, Betty Bumpers.
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ECBT's pro-vaccination awareness raising campaigns have expanded in recent years in response to growing controversies in autism and vaccine controversies. ECBT's Vaccinate Your Baby campaign was launched in 2008 to raise the awareness of issues regarding vaccine schedule compliance and to provide information on the safety of vaccines based on peer reviewed science.
Background
In 1991, Rosalynn Carter and Betty Bumpers founded Every Child By Two (ECBT) in response to a measles outbreak in which around 150 people, including young children, died as a result of contracting the disease. At the time, Carter said, "It is imperative that we move quickly to increase our capacity to vaccinate children who are at risk for measles and other diseases, such as mumps, rubella and polio." Carter and Bumpers started the national immunization awareness project by enlisting the help of governors' spouses to help spread the word about the importance of vaccinations with the goal of immunizing 95% of U.S. children against diseases like diphtheria, measles, and rubella by the year 2000. The group also expanded their educational outreach to include information about other vaccine preventable diseases, including chickenpox, whooping cough,HPV.
ECBT has partnered with such groups as the American Nurses Association, Parents of Kids with Infectious Diseases (PKIDs), rotary clubs, state health departments, schools and universities. ECBT is also part of the Immunization Advocacy Coalition.
Led by Carter and Bumpers, ECBT has been instrumental in getting laws passed in every state which mandates vaccinations for all children before entering school.
Immunize On Time, Every Time
ECBT supports the use of immunization registries through which health care providers can track children's immunization histories and reduce the number of missed recommended immunizations. Its 2006 Immunize On Time, Every Time health disparities project reached health care providers in Houston, Newark, Las Vegas, and Cleveland and was sponsored by Wyeth Vaccines. The program later expanded to other states.
"No child should slip through the cracks and no parent should have to wonder if their child is protected and up-to-date. Children who are not vaccinated on time are vulnerable to vaccine preventable illnesses and even death, and this initiative raises awareness of these dangers."
Education
ECBT strives to educate parents and support health care providers in their efforts to immunize children from vaccine preventable diseases. Carter identifies the following as among the many reasons why parents fail to immunize their children: lack of awareness that childhood diseases still exist (despite medical advancements), a belief (by parents) that their children have a "natural immunity" to ailments, poor health-insurance coverage, cost, and limited access to health care.
ECBT emphasizes, in their statements to the press, the safety of vaccines: the rigorousness of the testing and safeguards that are in place once the vaccines are licensed. "Our campaign," Pisani says, "aims to dispel these myths and remind parents to get the facts before they make this critical decision regarding their children's health."
EBCT also supports the 2009 Federal Court ruling by three judges in a case filed with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR) does not cause autism. The ruling reinforces the organization's stance that the decisions parents face in determining whether or not to vaccinate their children should be based on the expert opinions of the scientific community.
ECBT's spokesperson for their Vaccinate Your Baby campaign, Amanda Peet, stated, "We are seeing outbreaks of measles again, a disease we had almost eliminated in the United States. The rumored link between vaccines and autism has been clearly disproven, yet the threat of these diseases is very real. Parents have to get the facts: vaccines save lives."
Other ECBT spokespeople include Katie Van Tornhout of South Bend, Indiana, whose infant daughter, Callie, died in 2010 after being exposed to pertussis, and Tim Jacks, a pediatrician from Gilbert, Arizona whose two children (one of whom was being treated for leukemia) were exposed in 2015 to measles by a child whose parents had chosen not to vaccinate against the disease. Jacks spoke at a senate hearing held by Lamar Alexander investigating the reemergence of vaccine-preventable diseases in the United States.
Criticism
In 2008, ECBT was criticized in a CBS News feature by antivaccine reporter Sharyl Atkisson in a feature called "How Independent Are Vaccine Defenders?" that questioned the group's link with pharmaceutical companies and a possible risk for conflict of interest. The report stated that it was not illegal for the group to receive funds from the vaccine industry. A spokesperson for ECBT told CBS that "there are simply no conflicts to be unearthed."
In 2014, ECBT was, again, criticized for its link to pharmaceutical companies when the group hosted the national launch of a pro-vaccine film, "Invisible Threat". Antivaccine critics claimed that ECBT aids "the bottom line of industries that fund them" and questioned its characterization of the film as being produced by a group of "award-winning high school student filmmakers." The executive producer, director, camera operator, and interviewer for the film were, purportedly, not students, but adult parents or teachers of the students, according to an antivax organization's press release.
Awards
1995 - Kiwanis International Award and $10,000 grant for "bringing attention to early immunization."
2000 - Chiron Corporation grant to fund an outreach campaign to "all U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Women, Infant and Children (WIC) staff agencies to promote new vaccine recommendations for children 6-23 months of age and pregnant women."
2006 - Chiron Corporation grant for public health education
2008 - Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Champion of Prevention Award at the 34th National Immunization Conference in Washington, DC.