Beyond Protection: How Childhood Vaccines Shape Generational Health
One Vax Two Lives | August 12, 2025
It is the beginning of National Immunization Awareness Month (NIAM), and we are looking for new collaborations to spread our message about vaccines in pregnancy. Our Substack newsletter reached Jackie Kaufman, the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Vaccine Ambassadors, who was kind enough to write this guest post. Thank you, Jackie, for your excellent work. We look forward to working together.
Vaccination is one of the most powerful and cost-effective tools we have to protect children’s health. Over the past 50 years, global immunization efforts have saved an estimated 154 million lives, most of them infants, making vaccines the single most impactful health intervention in preventing disease, next to clean water.
The value of vaccines extends beyond preventing illness. Good health is a gateway to higher educational attainment, improved gender equity, and long-term social and economic prosperity. In this way, investing in vaccines is about more than survival—it’s about building futures.
Yet despite this extraordinary success, more than 1.5 million children still die each year from vaccine-preventable diseases, roughly one child every 20 seconds. This figure does not account for the countless children who survive but face lifelong consequences, including blindness, deafness, paralysis, or cognitive impairment. These outcomes have lasting effects not only on the physical health of children but also on their ability to learn, connect socially, and thrive emotionally.
Ensuring that children have access to vaccines is one of the most urgent ways to save lives, particularly in communities where supportive medical care may be limited, financially out of reach, or nonexistent. In these settings, prevention is paramount.
While the benefits of vaccines to children are clear, their protection doesn’t end in childhood or adolescence—it extends into adulthood, safeguarding future pregnancies and the next generation.
At One Vax Two Lives, the idea is simple but profound: protecting a pregnant person through vaccination also protects their baby. At Vaccine Ambassadors, we see that same principle reflected across borders and generations. When a child is vaccinated today, we’re not only protecting that child—we’re investing in a healthier future for their own children and for the people around them. Vaccination creates a circle of protection that extends beyond the individual.
Vaccine Ambassadors is a US-based nonprofit created by healthcare providers and advocates of children’s health who believe that access to life-saving vaccines is a basic human right. To date, we have provided over 1 million vaccines covering 14 different diseases in 12 countries. In addition to strengthening childhood immunization programs, we also provide vaccines during humanitarian crises and following natural disasters.
Vaccines given in childhood lay the foundation for healthier adulthood—free from preventable diseases and, in turn, able to protect future children. Vaccinating children against hepatitis B helps break the cycle of mother-to-child transmission, the leading cause of chronic hepatitis B infection worldwide. Stopping transmission now protects not just one life, but future generations.
Measles and rubella can seriously harm pregnant individuals and their babies. By vaccinating children, we help protect future pregnancies, unborn babies, and newborns too young to be vaccinated. Both infections during pregnancy may lead to miscarriage, premature birth, low birth weight, and, in the case of rubella, congenital rubella syndrome (CRS)—a leading cause of preventable birth defects. These diseases are preventable through the MMR vaccine, typically given to children at 1 and 4 years of age.
Some vaccines, like tetanus, require boosters to maintain immunity because protection can wane over time. Neonatal tetanus—often fatal—can occur when a newborn’s umbilical site is exposed to bacteria in the environment during or after delivery. Because tetanus is not spread from person to person but introduced through environmental exposure, maternal immunity—passed through antibodies—provides critical protection during a newborn’s first vulnerable weeks.
Our work is grounded in the belief that no child should suffer or die from a disease we already know how to prevent. And no mother or father should face the heartbreak of losing a child. Every vaccine we provide is a step toward breaking that cycle.
We believe that we all have a shared responsibility for the health of all children, whether they reside in Seattle or Santo Domingo.
If you would like to support Vaccine Ambassadors, you can learn more here or by becoming a member of the Children’s Health Coalition.
About Vaccine Ambassadors
Vaccine Ambassadors is a US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit, established in 2015 by healthcare providers and advocates of children’s health. Through a joint initiative with partners at the Pan American Health Organization, Facilitating Equitable Access to Vaccines in the Americas, Vaccine Ambassadors funds contribute to the procurement and international logistics of priority vaccines identified in the Pan American Region.