The beginning of August marks the start of National Immunization Awareness Month. Immunization is one of the safest ways for you to protect your health and to help protect the health of your children by ensuring they have up-todate vaccines for their age group. Vaccines can help prevent very serious diseases and are based on your age, health condition, job, lifestyle, and travel habits. Scientific advances have allowed single vaccines to protect your children from many diseases with a fewer amount of antigens. Everyday, children are exposed to thousands of germs through their interactions with the environment and babies are born with immune systems that can fight a lot of these germs! But sometimes, they may come in contact with more serious diseases that their bodies are not prepared to handle and a single vaccine early on can help protect their immune system.