vaccine hesitancy

Another day, another study that underscores the societal benefits of vaccines and the consequences we’d face without them. In a study published earlier this week in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers took on the issue of vaccine hesitancy by estimating the disease burden and economic costs associated with declines in the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination rate. They noted that while overall childhood vaccine rates remain high in the U.S., there are areas where nonmedical exemption policies are materializing into declining immunization coverage. For example, this 2016 article in PLOS Medicine…

Protecting babies and children against dangerous — sometimes fatal — diseases is a core mission of public health. Everyday, in health departments across the nation, someone is working on maintaining and improving childhood vaccination rates and keeping diseases like measles and mumps from regaining a foothold in the U.S. Fortunately for us, public health has been so successful that it’s easy to forget what it was like just a few decades ago when measles was a common childhood illness. (Though here’s a reminder.) But sustaining vaccination rates that provide population-wide protection against…

As hard as it might be to believe, almost as long as there have been vaccinations, there has been an antivaccine movement, and as long as there has been an antivaccine movement, there have been parents who refuse to vaccinate. Indeed, in the 1800s, there were even groups with names like the Anti-Vaccination Society of America and the National Anti-Vaccination League. These days, antivaccine groups tend to hide their true nature with names like the National Vaccine Information Center and Generation Rescue, but the opposition to vaccinations is the same, just with different evils attributed to…