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Chris Downey, MSc, PSM is committed to the need for informed vaccination decision-making and began volunteering with NVIC in 2007. Chris has assisted NVIC in conducting an analyses of HPV vaccine VAERS reports and is the developer of the Vaccine Ingredients Calculator; a novel personal project that combines his interest in vaccines, informed consent and software development.

The Vaccine Ingredients Calculator is a web application that allows consumers to compare vaccine ingredients, select vaccine brands and particular vaccine combinations that minimize exposures to various toxic ingredients, and ultimately, create individualized Vaccination Plans for their children.

Chris has also developed the Vaccine Tweet Machine, which disseminates more than 700 carefully handcrafted tweets that are randomly broadcast once an hour.  The Vaccine Tweet Machine uses Twitter as a powerful platform to share NVIC’s 30-year organizational knowledge in an innovative and fascinating way that reaches younger parents via @VaxCalc on Twitter.

Chris has a graduate degree in Organizational Management and has been developing software for more than 20 years. At his current position, he is responsible for building an Inventory Control/Warehouse Management system with more than 50,000 items worth $125 million. His primary technical skill set includes SQL (PostgreSQL, SQL Server), Ruby, Rails, git, HTML5 + Bootstrap, Mac OS X, Linux, Heroku, VMware vCloud Director. More detail can be found on LinkedIn.

He earned an undergraduate degree in Political Science at Syracuse University where he also developed an interest in computers. After graduation, he secured a position at IBM where he managed computer hardware and learned computer programming. He then worked for a defense contractor where he prepared on-demand dBase reports under high-pressure situations during the Somali Operation Restore Hope. Afterwards, he worked for the Federal Reserve Board and developed trading history systems for two Wall Street firms. In 1998, he founded and managed 2s2i, the first “Internet monitoring” company that endeavored to understand - rather than manipulate – consumer perspectives.

Chris is the father of three children who have either life-threatening food allergies or immune system problems. He developed an interest in informed consent after investigating the evidence supporting birth-dose Hepatitis B vaccine and reviewing related vaccine injury reports filed with the federal Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). He is interested in creating new software-based technologies that enable parents to monitor their child’s health and development, make optimized and informed decisions, and create individualized plans of care for their children.