This city is hailed as a vaccination success. Can it be sustained?

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — On his first day of school at Newcomer Academy, Maikel Tejeda was whisked to the school library. “I don’t have a problem with that,” said the 12-year-old, who moved from Cuba early this year. Across the library, a group of city, state and federal officials gathered to celebrate the school clinic, and the city. With U.S. childhood vaccination rates below their goals, Louisville and the state were being praised as success stories: Kentucky’s vaccination rate for kindergarteners rose 2 percentage points in the 2022-2023 school year compared with the year before. “Progress is success,” said Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Jefferson County’s rate slid, too. Local officials believe they can get to herd immunity thresholds, but they acknowledge challenges that includes tight funding, misinformation and well-intended bureaucratic rules that can discourage doctors from giving kids shots. “We’re closing the gap,” said Eva Stone, who has managed the county school system’s health services since 2018. “We’re not closing the gap very quickly.” Public health experts focus on vaccination rates for kindergartners because schools can be cauldrons for germs and the launching pad for community outbreaks. For years, those rates were high, thanks largely to mandates that required key vaccinations as a condition of school attendance. When COVID-19 started hitting the U.S. hard in 2020, schools were closed, visits to pediatricians declined and vaccination record-keeping fell off. Meanwhile, more parents questioned routine childhood vaccinations that they used to automatically accept, an effect that experts attribute to misinformation and the political schism that emerged around COVID-19 vaccines. A Gallup survey released last month found that 40% of Americans said it is extremely important for parents to have their children vaccinated, down from 58% in 2019. Meanwhile, a recent University of Pennsylvania survey of 1,500 people found that about 1 in 4 U.S. adults think the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine causes autism — despite no medical evidence for it. The CDC has not yet reported national data for the 2023-2024 school year, but the proportion of U.S. kindergartners exempted from school vaccination requirements the year before hit a record 3%. Overall, 93% of kindergartners got their required shots for the 2022-2023 school year. The roughly 250 U.S. measles cases reported so far this year are the most since 2019, and Oregon is seeing its largest outbreak in more than 30 years. Nationally, nearly 14,000 cases have been reported this year, the most since 2019. The whooping cough surge is a warning sign but also an opportunity, said Kim Tolley, a California-based historian who wrote a book last year on the vaccination of American schoolchildren. Much of the discussion about raising vaccination rates centers on campaigns designed to educate parents about the importance of vaccinating children — especially those on the fence about getting shots for their kids. It’s hard to poke holes in it,” said Mike Perry, who ran focus groups on behalf of a group called the Public Health Communications Collaborative. And they do seem to be at least curious about information they didn’t know, including the history of research behind vaccines and the dangers of the diseases they were created to fight, he said. The caption reads, “He thinks ‘diphtheria’ is the name of a dinosaur.” Dolores Albarracin has studied vaccination improvement strategies in 17 countries, and repeatedly found that the most effective strategy is to make it easier for kids to get vaccinated. “In practice, most people are not vaccinating simply because they don’t have money to take the bus” or have other troubles getting to appointments, said Albarracin, director of the communication science division within Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. That’s a problem in Louisville, where officials say few doctors were providing vaccinations to children enrolled in Medicaid and fewer still were providing shots to kids without any health insurance. An analysis a few years ago indicated 1 in 5 children — about 20,000 kids — were not current on their vaccinations, and most of them were poor, said Stone, the county school health manager. But in a meeting with the CDC director last month, Louisville health officials lamented that most local doctors don’t participate in the program because of paperwork and other administrative headaches. In 2019, it applied to become a VFC provider, and gradually established vaccine clinics. Last year, it held clinics at nearly all 160 schools, and it’s doing the same thing this year. The first was at Newcomer Academy, where many immigrant students behind on their vaccinations are started in the school system. It’s been challenging, Stone said. There are bureaucratic obstacles, and a growing influx of children from other countries who need shots. The local health department and nursing schools are crucial partners, and city leaders support the endeavor. At the recent vaccination celebration, Mayor Craig Greenberg acknowledged access problems and that vaccinations have become politicized. But “to me, there’s nothing political about improving public health, about improving the health of our kids,” said Greenberg, a Democrat. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/wireStory/city-hailed-vaccination-success-sustained-113697890