The state requires students to be vaccinated against certain diseases in order to attend school with exemptions made for medical reasons, religious beliefs or personal philosophies.
For the 2019-2020 school year, nearly 90% of kindergarten students in Ohio had all of the required immunizations when entering school, according to state data. At its lowest point in the pandemic, 85.6% of kindgarten students in Ohio had all of the necessary vaccines.
The statewide immunization rate started to recover after the pandemic, but it has not been a steady incline.
In the 2022-2023 school year, 86.5% of kindergarten students having their required vaccinations, but it declined slightly to 86.2% in the 2023-2024 school year, Vanderhoff said.
“Sometimes we may feel like these vaccines are for diseases of the past. Diseases that are no longer relevant today, but all too often, we are encountering proof that this simply isn’t true,” Vanderhoff said.
Ohio has had seven cases of the measles this year, he said. It was not that long ago Ohio had an outbreak of measles in central Ohio in the fall of 2022 with more than 80 cases.
“We continue to see tragic cases of so many of these vaccine preventable illnesses popping up right here in Ohio,” Vanderhoff said.
Ohio has had outbreaks of pertussis, also called whooping cough, along with meningococcal disease and mumps.
“All of these diseases are covered by the recommended childhood vaccines,” Vanderhoff said.
‘A victim of their own success’
Misinformation, a lack of concern for these diseases and pandemic-era mandates for the COVID vaccine in certain occupations have all contributed to making routine childhood vaccinations less popular, according to Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
“I think vaccines are largely a victim of their own success. People aren’t afraid of these diseases anymore,” said Offit, who is a nationally recognized immunologist and sits an advisory committee on vaccines for the Food and Drug Administration.
Myths regarding the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and its debunked link to autism persist as reasons some parents put off vaccinating their children.
After the debunked study linking the MMR vaccine to autism came out, other researchers started looking at the question of “Are you at greater risk of getting autism if you’ve gotten the vaccine or not?”
In every case, there’s no evidence that the MMR vaccine causes autism, Offit said.
Before the MMR vaccine came out in 1963, every year there would be about 48,000 children who were hospitalized by measles and about 500 who would die from measles pneumonia or measles encephalitis, meaning inflammation of the brain or dehydration, Offit said.
“Measles is back. It’s the most contagious of the vaccine preventable diseases,” Offit said.
Parents opting out
Pandemic-era requirements for workers in certain occupatons to get the COVID vaccine―though many of those mandates have ended―may have rubbed some people the wrong way, turning them off of all vaccines, according to Offit.
“I think we leaned into this libertarian left hook, which affected not only COVID vaccines, but I think all vaccines. I think it’s sort of spilled over into all mandates, and you can see this sort of pushback on mandates in the political world,” Offit said.
Ohio is one of the easiest states to opt out of the school vaccine requirement for children as it is one of 15 states that offer a personal philosophy exemption to the immunization requirement.
“We really do work with patients and physicians have great respect for the doctor-patient relationship and the autonomy of our patients,” Vanderhoff said.
It is important for doctors to share accurate information on the vaccines to the parents, “who are the decision makers,” Vanderhoff said.
“I really think that is the right approach. It is the approach that we take here in Ohio and across much of the nation,” Vanderhoff said.
‘You feel that you failed’
The non-medical exemptions for parents to use to opt out of childhood vaccinations are something Offit struggles with, he said.
“It’s the parent’s decision, but what do you do when you have to stand back and watch parents make a bad decision,” Offit said.
Offit has seen parents choose not to get a pneumococcal vaccine for their child and then the child gets invasive pneumococcal disease, which is a serious bacterial infection.
“You feel that you failed, and I don’t know what to do other than to make a passionate case for why it’s important to get vaccines,” Offit said.
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