The States Where Vaccinations Are Falling

A new Health Testing Centers study used Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data to determine where vaccination rates are rising and falling across the United States. It focused on vaccination rates for MMR, DTAP, Varicella, Hepatitus B and Polio among kindergartners, and alarmingly, it found that over half of U.S. states have experienced a decline in the past decade. It noted that vaccination rates among children have fluctuated considerably in recent years and that while annual changes of 1 percent or less may seem insignificant, such tiny deviations represent thousands of kids who are theoretically susceptible to serious outbreaks of disease.

Anti-vaccination sentiment is one of the chief reasons behind the decline but there are others such as a lack of access to healthcare and low rates of health insurance among low-income families. Despite the decline, progress is still being made in some parts of the country with South Carolina and Iowa reporting a rise of 8.5 percentage points between 2009 and 2018. West Virginia and Rhode Island also experienced increased of 7.7 and 7.4 percentage points respectively.

27 states are falling short on shots and over the past decade, both Georgia and Arkansas saw their vaccination rates fall by more than six percentage points. Utah and Oklahoma also saw theirs decline by more than four percentage points. When it comes to measles, mumps and rubella, three states now have vaccination rates of less than 90 percent - Colorado, Kansas and Idaho. all states with the exception of Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina and Wyoming (these states did not report their data to the CDC).