Jan 26, 2026
How well flu vaccines protect public health
Science Sessions are brief conversations with cutting-edge researchers, National Academy members, and policymakers as they discuss topics relevant to today's scientific community. Learn the behind-the-scenes story of work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), plus a broad range of scientific news about discoveries that affect the world around us.
In this episode, Lauren Meyers explains what the 2022-2023 influenza season taught us about the effectiveness of flu vaccines.
In this episode, we cover:
•[00:00] Introduction
•[01:16] Computational epidemiologist Lauren Meyers introduces the
health and hospitalization burden of seasonal influenza.
•[01:47] She defines vaccine effectiveness.
•[02:37] Meyers describes the features of the 2022-2023 flu
season.
•[04:05] She describes how the researchers estimated the
hospitalizations prevented by vaccination.
•[05:11] Meyers tells how vaccination of young adults protected
adults over 65 years of age.
•[06:56] She describes the takeaways of the study for future flu
seasons.
•[08:08] Meyers lists the caveats and limitations of the study.
•[09:49] Conclusion.
About Our Guest:
Lauren Meyers
Professor
University of Texas at Austin
View related content here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2505175122
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