March 12, 2025, News Staff — Family physicians have several new resources to help them promote vaccination against respiratory syncytial virus in patients ages 60 and older, augmenting the AAFP’s already robust RSV clinical guidance for this population.
All these new tools are available on the Academy’s RSV Vaccines and Therapeutics page.
“Increasing RSV Vaccination in Adults 60+” is a guide to effective conversations with patients, offering primary care clinicians and teams educational tools and evidence-based strategies to boost patient understanding and uptake of RSV vaccines. It includes guidance from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices as well as motivational interviewing strategies to steer conversations in the exam room.
The tools update the AAFP’s RSV materials, which have expanded in the two years since the Academy approved the 2023 authorization of two vaccines shown to prevent severe RSV complications in older adults. That year, the CDC and the AAFP recommended that adults 60 and older “may receive a single dose of RSV vaccine using shared clinical decision-making.”
In 2024, ACIP members voted unanimously to recommend that
The Academy approved this guidance as well.
The AAFP’s 2025 update emphasizes the ways that family physicians can help correct older adults’ suboptimal uptake of RSV — a gap caused in part by health disparities among marginalized and underserved populations. (The AAFP’s Center for Diversity and Health Equity has more detailed information about the social determinants of health that factor into vaccination and related issues.)
A related FPM supplement — Family Physicians’ Role in Preventing RSV Disease in Older Adults — calls for integrating RSV vaccination into routine preventive care, among other strategies. “A strong, clear recommendation from a health care professional is the best predictor of whether a patient will get vaccinated,” the supplement notes, citing CDC data.
AAFP members are well positioned to boost RSV immunization uptake; family physicians conduct approximately some 193 million office visits annually, and 97% of Academy members care for patients 60 years and older. Academy survey data further indicate that 34% of family physicians administered RSV vaccinations during the 2023-24 respiratory virus season.
In tandem with the other new resources on the Academy’s RSV Vaccines and Therapeutics page, a March 4 Inside Family Medicine podcast episode features a conversation with James Bigham, M.D., M.P.H., FAAFP, about RSV vaccination. Bigham, a professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, is a former AAFP Vaccine Science Fellow.
“There is seasonality to RSV, but probably the easiest approach is to simply say: ‘If you meet criteria for the vaccine and you're here in clinic or we're able to get you that vaccine maybe at your local pharmacy, we should just do it,’” Bigham says on the podcast. “There doesn't have to be a specific timing to this. Some folks might prefer to match their vaccination with the seasonality, and that's fine.”
The new tools also include a four-part video series with guidance from Margot Savoy, M.D., M.P.H., FAAFP, the Academy’s senior vice president for education, inclusiveness and physician well-being. The videos outline the 2025 RSV vaccination recommendations and include tips for counseling hesitant patients.
About one-third of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy are diagnosed postpartum, and the care package covers both postpartum counseling and establishing effective transitions of care.