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By the 1950s, polio replaced tuberculosis as the deadliest communicable disease in the United States. The first publicly available vaccine, the Salk Vaccine, was made available to the public by academic institutions such as Cal State LA. Colleges…

Cal State LA served as a vaccination site, offering free Salk vaccines to combat polio in the 1950s. Full immunity required three shots of the Salk vaccine, and despite constant re-supplying, some vaccination sites struggled to keep up with demand.

Initially offered at no cost, by 1958 Cal State LA began offering low-cost vaccinations to students and their family members under the age of 40.

By the 1960s a new type of polio vaccine was developed - the Sabin Oral Vaccine. Drops of vaccine were administered orally, dropped on a sugar cube and dissolved on the tongue. As with the Salk vaccine, the Sabin Oral Vaccine was once again…

The Sabin Oral Polio Vaccine could be offered at just a 25 cent donation and was recommended to persons of all ages, even those that had previously received the Salk vaccine.

Despite the low-cost of the new Sabin Oral Vaccine, less than one-fourth of the expected number of people turned out for the first day of distribution. Only one million out of the projected 6 million Californians showed up to clinics like those held…

Sabin Oral Polio Vaccine registration forms such as this were printed in issues of Cal State LA’s newspaper, The College Times in an effort to encourage students to get vaccinated against polio.

Originally developed in 1907 as a fundraiser to fight tuberculosis, Christmas Seals were a special type of stamp sold to raise money for respiratory diseases. Still in use today, the campaign has grown to include other forms of respiratory disease…

Despite the fact that polio vaccines had been in use for nearly 15 years with great success, a small subset of the population remained skeptical, some going so far as to theorize that their distribution was part of a “Communist plot.”

Though vaccination was beginning to successfully protect people against diseases like polio, healthcare professionals continued to reiterate the importance of thorough and frequent handwashing.