Findings from a Mini-Sentinel Medical Product Assessment: Influenza Vaccines and Risk of Febrile Seizures

On July 21, 2014, the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at Brookings hosted a webinar, “Findings from a Mini-Sentinel Medical Product Assessment: Influenza Vaccines and Risk of Febrile Seizures.” This webinar provided an overview of a recent assessment that examined a possible association between use of certain trivalent inactivated influenza vaccines and febrile seizures in children. The results of the webinar will ultimately help to interpret the larger context of what is known about vaccines from various sources. The assessment will also enable Mini-Sentinel investigators to build general strategies to assess suspected associations of selected medical products and adverse events.

Presenters included Dr. Michael Nguyen, Deputy Director, Division of Epidemiology in the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; and Dr. Alison Kawai, Epidemiologist in the Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute.