TheVaccine Safety Datalink Project (VSD) was established in 1990 by theUnited States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to study theadverse effects ofvaccines.

Four largehealth maintenance organizations, includingKaiser Permanente, were initially recruited to provide the CDC with medical data onvaccination histories, health outcomes, and subject characteristics. The VSD database contains data compiled fromsurveillance on more than seven million people in the United States, including about 500,000 children from birth through age six years (2% of the U.S. population in this age group).^[1]

The VSD data-sharing program is now being administered by theNational Center for Health Statistics Research Data Center. The data sharing guidelines have been revised to include comments from interested groups as well as recommendations from theInstitute of Medicine (IOM).

TheVaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the VSD, and the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment (CISA) Network are tools by which the CDC and FDAmeasure vaccine safety^[2] to fulfill their duty asregulatory agencies charged with protecting the public. Data from the VSD Project have been used to address a number of vaccine safety concerns; examples include a study clarifying the risk ofanaphylaxis after vaccine administration^[3] and several studies examining the rejected hypothesis of alink between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.^[4][5]

The following organizations are members of the project:^[6]

• Kaiser Permanente Washington, Seattle, Washington
• Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Boston, Massachusetts
• HealthPartners Institute, Bloomington, Minnesota^[7]
• Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Portland, Oregon
• Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland, California
• Kaiser Permanente Colorado, Denver, Colorado
• Denver Health Medical Center, Denver, Colorado
• Marshfield Clinic Research Institute, Marshfield, Wisconsin
• Kaiser Permanente Southern California, Los Angeles, California
• Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic States (Rockville, MD)
• Acumen (Burlingame, CA)
• Indiana University (Indianapolis, IN)
• OCHIN (Portland, OR)

• NationalAcademies.org – 'Independent Oversight of Vaccine Safety Data Program Needed To Ensure Greater Transparency and Enhance Public Trust',National Academies (February 17, 2005)
• WHO.int (pdf) – 'The Vaccine Safety Datalink: immunization research in health maintenance organizations in the USA', R.T. Chen, F. DeStefano, R.L. Davis, L.A. Jackson, R.S. Thompson, J.P. Mullooly, S.B. Black, H.R. Shinefield, C.M. Vadheim, J.I. Ward, S.M. Marcy & the Vaccine Safety Datalink Team,World Health Organization

• Vaccination-related organizations based in the United States
• Drug safety
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from November 2020