The American Academy of Pediatrics’ new immunization website offers information about vaccine-preventable diseases, the safeness of vaccines, and the schedule for receiving those vaccines. The site’s most interesting feature, surprisingly, is not stats, figures, and data, but the inclusion of personal stories from those who experienced the devastation of vaccine-preventable disease—parents who watched their children suffer and the pediatricians who treat these children.

Started in 1999 and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Childhood Immunization Support Program, aims to get more children immunized by offering education and resources to both parents and pediatricians. The new website is easy to navigate and chock full of downloadable PDF fact sheets.

In the Sound Advice section, you can either read transcripts or listen to interviews with parents and researchers. The interviews with researchers are fairly straight-forward, but several parent interviews recount nightmarish scenarios of their children falling severely ill with the flu or pneumococcal meningitis—though their stories have happy endings as their children survived.

Most distressing is listening to Frankie Milley, a grieving mother whose only child died as a teenager from a vaccine-preventable form of meningitis. She recounts through tears the hospital’s efforts to save her child, how blood poured from every orifice, and how her husband helplessly told his son over and over, “Daddy loves you, baby boy, daddy loves you, baby boy.”

Some might consider this raw display of emotion exploitive, but as the founder of the non-profit organization Meningitis Angels, Milley clearly wants people to know about her experience so that others can be spared such pain.

Others might find the stories manipulative. Although parents who do not vaccinate or selectively vaccinate often do their own research on safety and efficacy of vaccines, and they know that fatalities due to vaccine-preventable diseases are uncommon. But if you want to grab those parents on the fence, Milley’s story is one way to do it.

Finally, the News & Multimedia page delivers everything you need to know about the Swine Flu (H1N1 influenza) and the reinstated Hib booster dose, as well as all the official AAP responses to vaccine discussions in the media. Also in this section is a 6-part Spanish radionovela, “Hablando de Vacunas” (Talking about Vaccines). Spanish-speakers will enjoy the story of Pedro and Carmen, Carmen’s niece Lupe and her husband Jose, and their baby Carlitos. Through narratives about the family’s experiences of doctor’s visits, job hunting, barbecues, and one character’s celebration of getting her “Basic English” diploma, the realities of immunizations are laid bare.

More than statistics or facts, real stories from real parents will convince many parents to vaccinate their children.