April 2025

This month we have chosen to make child health the theme of Nursing Times. Our lead feature looks at how nurses around the country are tackling falling vaccination uptake. Nurses working for the UK Health Security Agency, Essex County Council and University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are among those leading efforts to rebuild immunisation levels. Linked to this topic, Fernanda Aguilar Perez and William Roberts discuss how nurses can help improve vaccination uptake in underserved communities. At the core of this issue, however, is our new collection of factsheets on childhood infections. Covering symptoms, care and complications, they are a bitesize guide for nurses to common diseases, including meningitis, measles, mumps, scarlet fever and whooping cough. Sticking with early years, the founder and chief executive of the School and Public Health Nurses Association, Sharon White, is retiring after 45 years of working with children, young people and their families. We have spoken to her about her legacy as a champion of school nursing.