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Fewer Than Half of Americans Report Having Gotten A Flu Vaccine this Season

Track your child’s milestones and act early if you have a concern.

If you have pneumonia, follow your treatment plan, take all medicines as prescribed, and get follow-up medical care. If you have pneumonia, limit contact with family and friends. To keep the infection from spreading to other people, cover your nose and mouth while coughing or sneezing, get rid of used tissues right away, and wash your hands.

Pneumococcal, influenza (flu), and Hib vaccines can help prevent certain types of pneumonia. Good hygiene, quitting smoking, and keeping your immune system strong by exercising and healthy eating are other ways to prevent pneumonia.

Treatment for pneumonia depends the type of pneumonia you have, the germ causing your infection, and how severe your pneumonia is. Bacterial pneumonia is treated with medicines called antibiotics. Antibiotics don't work when the cause of pneumonia is a virus. If you have viral pneumonia, your doctor may prescribe an antiviral medicine to treat it.

Your doctor will diagnose pneumonia based on your medical history, a physical exam, and results from certain diagnostic tests such as a chest x ray, blood tests, or blood culture. Your doctor may recommend other tests—sputum test, chest computed tomography (CT) scan, pleural fluid culture, pulse oximetry, or bronchoscopy—if you're in the hospital, have serious symptoms, are older, or have other health problems.

The signs and symptoms of pneumonia can be mild or severe and may include a cough with phlegm (a slimy substance), fever, chills, and trouble breathing. Possible complications may include bacteremia, septic shock, lung abscesses, pleural effusions, empyema, pleurisy, renal failure, or respiratory failure.

Many factors such as age (being younger than two years old or 65 of older), smoking, and other medical conditions such as heart failure, diabetes, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), or people who have weak immune systems due to HIV/AIDS, chemotherapy (a treatment for cancer), or organ or blood and marrow stem cell transplant procedures can increase your chances of getting pneumonia and having more severe pneumonia.

Pneumonia occurs when certain bacterial, viral, and fungal infections cause inflammation in the air sacs, or alveoli, of the lungs. Some of the more common causes in the United States include Streptococcus pneumoniae or pneumococcus bacteria, the influenza or flu virus, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Program evaluation is essential to public health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sets standards for evaluation, develops evaluation tools and resources, and provides support for evaluation capacity-building.