Public Health 

Vaccination refusers: Tide of 'belief exemptions' grows in California

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Santa Cruz Sentinel
Summary: 

Thousands of California parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children, despite last year's record-setting whooping cough outbreak. And the number is growing, much to the alarm of pediatricians and state health officials. Over the past decade, "personal belief exemptions" (PBEs) have tripled. Signed by parents, the exemptions allow children to enter school missing some or all vaccines. Statewide, more than two percent of kindergarteners have such exemptions. With a 9.5 percent PBE rate -- more than four times the state average -- Santa Cruz County is close to ground zero in this often heated and emotional debate. State experts say that as long as 95 percent of a population is immunized, "herd immunity" keeps contagious diseases from spreading. But vaccine refusal tends to concentrate in geographical areas like northern Santa Cruz County, where close to 17 percent of incoming kindergarteners had PBEs on file last fall – one of California’s highest rates. "If they were scattered fairly evenly around the state, the implications would be much less concerning," said Dr. Rob Schechter, medical officer with the Immunization branch of the state Department of Public Health, which collects the statistics on student immunizations. "The fact that they are concentrated in communities, social networks and schools with much higher rates -- that allows disease to spread much more rapidly."

Results
As vaccinations decline, threat of outbreaks grows
Jocelyn Wiener, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | August 28, 2011
SANTA CRUZ -- Thousands of California parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children, despite last year's record-setting whooping cough outbreak. And the number is growing, much to the alarm of pediatricians and state health officials. Over the past decade, "personal belief exemptions" have tripled. Signed by parents, PBEs allow children to enter school missing some or all vaccines. Statewide, more than two percent of kindergarteners have such exemptions.
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Results
Mother torn amid conflicting advice on vaccinations
Jocelyn Wiener, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | August 28, 2011
Savitri Jones has always tried to live a natural lifestyle. After the arrival of her four-and-a-half-year-old twins, Lucia and Kai, that seemed even more important. Kai has Down syndrome, and a relatively fragile immune system. All the vaccines her pediatricians were peddling made her nervous. What was in them? How could she know that they don’t cause autism? “It’s just too much stuff to put in their bodies when they’re so brand new and should be welcomed to the world and not messed around with a lot,” she said.
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Results
Doctor agonizes over parents' stubornness on vaccinations
Jocelyn Wiener, CHCF Center for Health Reporting | August 28, 2011
It may be decades later, but Dr. Elizabeth Baskerville still cries when she remembers the little girl. Four years old. Dead of meningitis. The day she read the news in the paper, the child’s name had sounded familiar. Baskerville went to her office to see if there was a file. Sure enough, she had written in her notes that she had seen the girl as a one-year-old. At that appointment, the child’s mother had decided to wait on vaccination. She said she’d think about it. She hadn’t come back. Baskerville only hopes the woman doesn’t remember refusing that vaccine. “As a parent, how do you get through that?” she asks. “If you know you could have prevented something and you lose your child, how do you ever get over that?”
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