Where vaccine recommendations are actually published

The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report publishes more than its weekly
issue. Two serial publications carry the longer work, and one of them is where
a great deal of American clinical practice is formally set down.

Recommendations and Reports

**MMWR Recommendations and Reports contains in-depth articles relaying policy
statements for prevention and treatment across all areas of the CDC's
responsibility** — including, explicitly, **the recommendations of the
Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)**.

That is worth knowing if you have ever wondered where the US immunisation
schedule actually lives. ACIP meets, votes, and its recommendations are
published here — which makes this serial the document of record for who should
be vaccinated against what, and when.

A clinician following "the CDC schedule" is following something published in
this series.

Surveillance Summaries

The companion serial carries the long-form surveillance analyses — multi-year
data on a single condition, of the kind that establishes a trend rather than
reporting an event.

What the author instructions cover

The guide for authors runs through: **types of serial report, proposing and
submitting one, authorship, clearance, submission formats, guidance for
correcting errors**, and contact information.

Clearance has a section of its own because these are policy documents. A
weekly report describes what happened; a Recommendations and Reports article
tells the country's clinicians what to do — and that has to pass through the
agency's own review before it is published under its name.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.