Pre-emptive vaccination can prevent or limit vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks in healthcare workers and in the general population.

Key Evidence: In a study of a 2003 outbreak of pertussis in the U.S., including 17 cases among healthcare workers, researchers estimated that vaccinating healthcare workers would prevent nearly 50% of disease exposures by healthcare workers per year.

Key Evidence: Using data on the spread of Ebola from person to person during historical Ebola outbreaks to compare vaccination strategies, researchers found that prophylatically vaccinating all healthcare workers would have decreased the number of disease cases in the 2014 epidemics in Guinea and Nigeria by 60-80%.