CHANGE: Where Have All The Ear Infections Gone? “A study published in 2014 in JAMA Pediatrics looked at the number of medical visits for otitis media made by children up to the age of 6 and found a downward trend from 2004 to 2011, with a significant drop in 2010-11. The first routine childhood pneumococcal vaccine was introduced in 2000; we changed to a vaccine effective against a wider set of bacterial serotypes in 2010.”