Rep. Jonathan Stickland, who THE


EXEMPTION LEADERS


These are the 10 Texas counties with the highest percentage of students with a nonmedical vaccination exemption in 2015–16.


County Gaines


Briscoe Blanco Rains Kent Kendall Travis Hartley Burnet Denton


Percentage of Students With a Nonmedical Exemption


4.83 3.55 3.06 2.85 2.65 2.50 2.30 2.24 2.21 2.05


Source: Texas Department of State Health Services, Annual Survey of Immunization Status. Data current as of July 14, 2016


also voted against HB 2474, refer- enced privacy and personal liberty and referred to immunization re- cords as “private health care data that some of us feel we shouldn’t be reporting at all and that the govern- ment shouldn’t have anything to do with this.” Mesquite pediatrician Lisa Swan-


son, MD, chair of TMA’s Committee on Child and Adolescent Health, says offering campus-level statistics is a “no-brainer.” “It’s revenue-neutral. It isn’t go-


ing to cost anybody anything,” she said. “The information’s out there because the school nurses actually collect this data, so any given school nurse actually knows this informa- tion; they just can’t release it. The data’s there; it just needs to be made public. To me, it’s an easy thing to do, and … I think the parents at the school have a right to know the vac- cination rate.” Senator Seliger says the concerns


people have about vaccinations come “from the very best of places, from a parent’s concern about those children.” He says he’s a strong ad- vocate of privacy. “But because those records will be heavily redacted, nobody’s going to know anything about the Smith kid or the Jones kid or something; they are simply going to have the statisti- cal information that may be of con- cern to them,” he said.


BATTLING THE MISINFORMATION Although DSHS data consistently show the vast majority of students it accounts for have up-to-date immu- nization coverage, the numbers also show overall conscientious exemp- tions are on the rise. The department’s annual immu-


nization report shows immunization coverage levels for six vaccinations:


• Diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP);


28 TEXAS MEDICINE March 2017


• Heptatitis A; • Hepatitis B; •


Measles, mumps, rubella (MMR), two doses;


• Polio; and • Varicella, two doses;


The 2015–16 report showed both kindergarteners and seventh-grad- ers were well-covered, with the cov- erage rate for each vaccine at 96.9 percent or higher for kindergarten and 96.1 percent or higher for grade 7. The highest percentage of consci- entious exemptions for any of the vaccinations at the kindergarten level was just 1.21 percent. For grade 7, exemption percentages for all vac- cinations were at 0.80 percent or less across the board. However, the report noted there were 44,716 stu- dents reported as having a conscien- tious exemption from kindergarten through grade 12, representing 0.84 percent of students at schools in the survey. That was an increase of more than 3,700 conscientious ex- emptions since the 2014–15 survey, which showed 0.79 percent of stu- dents had taken conscientious ex- emptions. (See “Exemptions on the Rise,” page 27, and “The Exemption Leaders,” at left.) The increase may be attributable


in part to the persistence of the anti- vaccine community. Nearly 20 years after publication of British physician Andrew Wakefi eld’s now-discredit- ed study, which found a possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism, skepticism over the safety of vaccines still persists. (See “Bad Sci- ence,” March 2011 Texas Medicine, pages 27–32, or visit www.texmed .org/BadScience.) For those who never found rea-


son to pay attention to the issue be- fore, the internet is a minefield of dubious science and pseudoscience. Dr. Swanson says she deals with the effects of anti-vaccination hysteria when she counsels new parents or parents who steadfastly refuse to immunize their children.


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