New report calls attention to lagging Wisconsin childhood vaccination rates
A new report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum shines a spotlight on lagging vaccination rates among Wisconsin schoolchildren and urges state and local officials to focus on districts with the most students behind in vaccination.
Last school year, one in 10 Wisconsin school children were not up-to-date on all routine vaccines required to attend school or had no vaccination record on file, according to figures reported by public and private schools to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
That amounts to about 90,000 K-12 students who do not have one or more of the required vaccines, which include vaccines for hepatitis B, polio, measles and other preventable diseases.
Highly contagious diseases like measles are especially concerning to public health officials, as outbreaks of the disease can be difficult to contain. On Tuesday, public health officials announced that a Milwaukee resident had tested positive for measles, one of at least 30 cases so far this year in the United States.
School immunization rates can vary widely from district to district and from school to school.
The Wisconsin Policy Forum report examined variations in vaccination rates among school districts.
The report relied on school immunization data reported to the state. It analyzed only data from public school districts and any charter schools authorized by a public district.
A total of 373 school districts, comprising 769,300 students, were included in the Wisconsin Policy Forum's analysis. The report excluded certain school districts from the analysis if they did not submit data to the state or their numbers were faulty.
Here's a few take-aways from the report.
Vaccination rates for Wisconsin schoolchildren remain well below pre-pandemic levels
Last year, 10.1% of Wisconsin students were missing at least one required vaccine, according to data from the state Department of Health Services.
That is a marked increase from pre-pandemic years, a fact that public health officials have being calling attention to. In the school years between 2013 and 2018, less than 8% of Wisconsin students were missing a required vaccine.
Personal conviction waivers have risen while other waivers have stayed flat
The report found that the percentage of students with personal conviction waivers exempting them from having to receive a required vaccine has grown over the last two decades to 4.6%, from 2.6% in 2003.
In Wisconsin, students and their parents may seek waivers on the basis of personal convictions or for medical or religious reasons.
Meanwhile, the percentage of students with medical and religious waivers has remained relatively flat, at less than 1% for each in a given year, the report says.
The report also found that districts with higher rates of personal conviction waivers tended to be small and located in towns and rural communities.
Democrats in the Republican-controlled state Legislature have introduced a bill this session to eliminate personal convictions as an allowed exemption from childhood immunizations. The same bill surfaced in a previous legislative session, but never made it to a floor vote. States that allow personal belief or philosophical exemptions have been found to have much higher exemption rates than states that only allow religious and medical exemptions.
Poorer districts tended to have more students behind on vaccines
In districts where more than half of students came from economically disadvantaged homes, an average of 6.6% of students were behind in getting routine vaccinations, the Wisconsin Policy Forum report found.
When leaving out Milwaukee Public Schools, which is by far the largest district in the state and accounts for nearly 9% of the students included in the analysis, an average of 3.7% of students in economically disadvantaged districts were behind.
That's compared to an average of 1.3% of students behind on vaccines in districts where fewer than a quarter of students come from economically disadvantaged homes.
The lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are partly behind the lower rates, said Heather Paradis, a pediatrician and Deputy Commissioner of Medical Services for the City of Milwaukee Health Department.
“We know that many children were unable to be brought in for their routine well-child care and vaccinations,” she said. “School closures combined with safer-at-home orders led to many individuals falling behind and we’re still trying to catch up from some of that.”
What local and state officials can do about it
The report included several recommendations for state and local officials, including that officials focus on districts with large numbers of students behind in their vaccinations.
"If the 78 districts with the most students living in poverty were able to catch up with their vaccinations, then more than 14,000 additional students in the state would be fully immunized," the report says.
The report urged local and state officials to target those districts with vaccination clinics, including ones that coincide with back-to-school events and school registration.
The Milwaukee Health Department is hosting about a dozen vaccination clinics at schools and other sitesaround the city this fall, Paradis said.
The report also urged officials with the state Department of Health Services to improve their data collection processes. Some districts had not submitted any school immunization data to the state, and others submitted data that was unreliable and likely contained errors.
The report also urged officials to gather more information about districts with a lot of students waiving immunization requirements on personal conviction grounds.
"A better understanding of families' reasons for this decision could inform campaigns to explain the benefits of vaccines and improve immunization rates," the report says.
Rory Linnane of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: New report calls attention to lagging Wisconsin childhood vaccine rates
