Via Businessinsider.com:

In 1977, Star Wars was first released. Vaccination campaigns had already eliminated the terrible smallpox virus from the US. That year, the last case would occur in the world. It wasn’t until two years later that vaccines stopped the spread of polio in the US, and vaccine-preventable diseases like measles were still widespread.

So to encourage parents to get their children vaccinated and to stop the spread of these horrible diseases, the CDC took a pop-culture cue — and a couple of our favorite droids — to send out an important message with this amazing poster: get your kids vaccinated to protect them from potentially life-threatening illnesses.

Now that’s an awesome PSA.

And it was only part of a Star Wars themed vaccination campaign. Check out this amazing commercial where R2 worries he’s caught whooping cough — also known as pertussis.

Luckily, as 3P0 explains, droids can’t catch those diseases. But as 3P0 explains, “if a young child gets whooping cough, it can lead to pneumonia, brain damage… even death.”

It’s been some time since parents have seen what these diseases can do, and due to increasing clusters of parents deciding they don’t want their kids getting vaccines (due to disproven fears about their effects), some of these diseases are starting to come back.

We don’t want that to happen.

In an odd twist of fate, the current outbreak of the vaccine-preventable measles virus began at Disneyland in California.

Since Disney now owns Star Wars, maybe they want to revive this campaign?