Preventive Visits & Immunizations

Regular Preventive Visits are important for monitoring growth and development, preventing illnesses, and addressing physical and behavioral concerns. Schedule these appointments in advance so you may choose the date that best fits your schedule.

The table below is our recommended schedule for Preventive Visits with the associated immunizations and preventive screenings. Our immunization and screening schedule follows recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

To learn more about a particular vaccine, simply click on it in the Preventive Visits Schedule and it will open for you to read. To learn more about the screenings, please review our section on preventive screenings.

We believe childhood vaccinations are the most important health-promoting and disease-preventing intervention that we can provide your child. Please feel free to read our Vaccine Statement.
 

Your child should be seen for a preventive visit every year after the age of 5.

Once your child reaches the preteen/teen years, preventive visits will include an adolescent depression screen, hemoglobin testing for anemia for girls, as well as other lab tests as indicated. Physical forms for sports participation may be completed at these visits. We think this is an important time for your maturing child to have the opportunity to ask questions about and assume more responsibility for his/her health, and we will request to talk to and examine your child alone (we will gladly provide a nurse chaperone if requested).

An Important Message For Parents:

(taken from the AAP website)

Now that your son or daughter is a teenager, his or her body and feelings are changing. It's important to keep a close relationship with your teen, but this also means encouraging the ability to make healthy decisions and allowing your teen to talk alone with the doctor at each visit. This will help your teen learn about himself or herself, develop a trusting relationship, and make healthy decisions. The doctor will encourage your teen to share information with you, but there may be some things he or she would rather talk about initially with the doctor, and that's OK. The most important thing is that your teen is talking with a responsible adult and his or her health concerns. For more information regarding AAP's Information on Teens, please click here.