NBA Cares puts focus on adolescent vaccinations

PHOENIX The charitable arm of the NBA is sending a basketball star out to educate parents about adolescent vaccinations.

NBA Cares hired Grant Hill of the Phoenix Suns to promote Vaccines for Teens, a national multimedia campaign to educate teenagers and their parents about vaccination against serious and potentially fatal diseases run under a partnership by the NBA, WNBA, the Society for Adolescent Medicine and Sanofi Pasteur. Diseases to which children and adolescents are susceptible range from relatively mild ones like the flu to serious ones like meningococcal disease and whooping cough.

Hill recently appeared at David Crockett Elementary School in Phoenix to tip off the campaign there.

“Vaccination can help teens grow into healthy adults and is beneficial for the students at David Crockett Elementary School and for teens throughout the Phoenix area,” Hill said. “In basketball, the best offense is a good defense, and the same holds true for protecting teen health.”