Health
Childhood Vaccination Rates Were Falling Even Before the Rise of R.F.K. Jr.
After years of holding steady, American vaccination rates against once-common childhood diseases have been dropping.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Share of U.S. kindergartners
vaccinated against …
Nationwide, the rate of kindergartners with complete records for the measles vaccine declined from around 95 percent before the pandemic to under 93 percent last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Immunization rates against polio, whooping cough and chickenpox fell similarly.
Average rates remain high, but those national figures mask far more precipitous drops in some states, counties and school districts.
In those areas, falling vaccination rates are creating new pockets of students no longer protected by herd immunity, the range considered high enough to stop an outbreak. For a community, an outbreak can be extremely disruptive. For children, measles and other once-common childhood diseases can lead to hospitalization and life-threatening complications.
Prepandemic is the average of 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20 data, though not all years were available for all states. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Delaware (in 2024) report the rate of students who have completed all required vaccines, not just the measles series. Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Change in kindergarten measles vaccination rates
Immunization rates fell in most states early in the pandemic, and continued to fall in the years that followed.
States, not the federal government, create and enforce their own vaccine mandates, but the incoming Trump administration could encourage anti-vaccine sentiment and undermine state programs. The president-elect’s nominee for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has spread the false theory that vaccines cause autism, among other misinformation.
But immunization rates had been falling for years before Mr. Kennedy’s recent political rise.
There are now an estimated 280,000 kindergartners without documented vaccination against measles, an increase of some 100,000 children from before the pandemic.
“These pockets are just waiting for an introduction of measles,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “It’s trouble waiting to happen.”
Why rates are falling
As the pandemic strained trust in the country’s public health system, more families of kindergartners formally opted out of routine vaccines, citing medical, philosophical or religious reasons. Others simply didn’t submit proof of a complete vaccination series, for any number of reasons, falling into noncompliance.
The shifts in exemptions mostly fall along political lines. In states that supported Mr. Trump for president in November, the number of students with official exemptions have increased on average (rising everywhere but West Virginia). Exemption rates rose in a few states that supported Vice President Kamala Harris — including Oregon, New Jersey and Minnesota — but stayed relatively flat or fell in most.
Includes medical and nonmedical exemptions. Montana was excluded due to lack of data. Wyoming is missing data for 2017-18. Delaware is missing data for 2019-20. West Virginia and Illinois are missing data for 2020-21. Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Share of kindergartners with a vaccine exemption
The pattern for noncompliance looks different: The rate of children with no vaccination record shot up in both red and blue states.
Not all children with missing records are unvaccinated. Some are in the process of getting their shots, delayed because of the pandemic, and others just never submitted documentation. Schools are supposed to bar out-of-compliance students from attending, but whether they do varies from state to state and school to school.
Montana was excluded due to lack of data. Wyoming is missing data for 2017-18. Delaware is missing data for 2019-20. West Virginia and Illinois are missing data for 2020-21. Alaska is missing data for 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21. Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Share of kindergartners with no recorded vaccination, and no exemption
Surveys reveal a new and deep partisan division on this issue. In 2019, 67 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners told Gallup that childhood immunizations were “extremely important,” compared with 52 percent of their Republican counterparts. Five years later, the enthusiasm among the Democratic grouping had fallen slightly to 63 percent. For Republicans and G.O.P. leaners it had plunged to 26 percent.
Today, 31 percent of Republicans say “vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they were designed to protect.” Just 5 percent of Democrats say the same.
“There seems to be a divide in terms of people’s feelings about science and skepticism towards the government,” said Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, chief medical executive for Michigan. “I think some of those divisions are becoming apparent in vaccination rates.”
Lawmakers in numerous states have tried to roll back school vaccine mandates, but most changes have been minor: Louisiana required schools to pair any mandate notifications with information about exemption laws; Idaho allowed 18-year-old students to exempt themselves; and Montana stopped collecting data from schools on immunizations.
But there are a few places where state-level policy changes, or lack thereof, appear to have had a direct effect on rates.
In Mississippi, which had long held the country’s highest kindergarten measles vaccination rate, a federal judge ordered the state to allow religious objections; the state’s vaccination rate fell. In contrast, West Virginia’s governor vetoed a bill that would have loosened school vaccine policy; the state now has the highest rate.
Rates rose in Maine and Connecticut, two states that eliminated nonmedical exemptions during the pandemic. They also rose in Alabama, according to C.D.C. data, though the state declined to comment on why.
Vulnerable pockets
Epidemiologists say that when vaccination rates slip under 90 percent for measles, outbreaks become significantly harder to contain. At some point below that, spread becomes almost inevitable if measles is introduced.
There are thousands more schools with vaccination rates below 90 percent compared with just five years ago, according to a New York Times analysis of detailed data from 22 states.
*Texas counts districts, not individual schools.
Most states publish measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine rates, but several publish only how many students complete all mandated shots. Most states exclude schools with small numbers of students. Most states publish rates for kindergartners only; for several states, however, these rates represent entire schools. New York data excludes N.Y.C. public schools. Source: state governments.
Change in share of schools with vaccination rates below 90 percent
Schools with falling rates can be found in red and blue states, in large urban districts and in small rural ones.
Measles vaccination rates dropped from 83 percent to 75 percent in Yavapai County in Arizona; from 93 percent to 78 percent in Pacific County on the coastline of Washington; from 97 percent to 93 percent in Union County, N.J., just outside New York City — places that span the political spectrum.
These numbers capture vaccination rates only for kindergartners, often partway through the school year, so they include students who may have finished their vaccine series later or will go on to finish it. And across the U.S., most students remain protected against childhood diseases.
But high rates nationally don’t help places no longer protected by herd immunity, as evidenced by recent outbreaks of childhood diseases. Measles and whooping cough cases both climbed last year; polio partly paralyzed a man in New York in 2022.
Growing anti-vaccine sentiment is only part of the public health challenge. In the Minneapolis public schools, completion rates for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine among kindergartners dropped from around 90 percent to 75 percent. The district’s exemption rate barely moved; instead, far more students had incomplete vaccination records.
Few of those students’ families are strongly anti-vaccine, said Luisa Pessoa-Brandao, director of public health initiatives with the Minneapolis Health Department. Some are immigrants who moved into the district recently, missing either shots or records. Others missed regular doctor visits during the pandemic and got out of the habit of preventative care.
“I think we’re going to be catching up for a while,” Ms. Pessoa-Brandao said.
While vaccination rates were dropping in Minneapolis, they climbed in neighboring St. Paul Public Schools, from around 91.4 percent to around 93 percent, according to state data.
The district attributed the rise to strict new procedures started in 2021, including letters and phone calls to families in their native languages; more vaccines available on district grounds; and monthly compliance reports — an extra mile that not every district is able or willing to go.
There are still parents who opt out. But during a measles outbreak last year, a few changed their mind, said Rebecca Schmidt, the St. Paul district’s director of health and wellness.
“The fear of measles,” she said, “is sometimes greater than the ease” of getting an exemption.
Data for all 50 states
Kindergarten measles vaccination rate
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For some years in some states, the rate represents a complete vaccine series, not just the measles vaccine.
Use left and right arrow keys to navigate between menu items.
Use escape to exit the menu.
Sign Up
Create a free account to access exclusive content, play games, solve puzzles, test your pop-culture knowledge and receive special offers.
Already have an account? Login
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Adult patients experienced significant relief from pain and anxiety after just five minutes of in-person prayer, as found in a randomized controlled trial.
The study, led by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, compared the effects of direct prayer to the effects of listening to music, revealing that prayer provided greater and more sustained relief for both symptoms.
“Prayer is powerful and beneficial on many levels,” Jesse Bradley, pastor of Grace Community Church in Washington, told Fox News Digital.
5 PRAYERS TO EASE ELECTION ANXIETY SHARED BY RELIGIOUS LEADERS
According to statistics cited in the study, prayer is the most used form of complementary medicine in the United States, relied on by 43% of Americans.
The researchers focused on a practice known as proximal intercessory prayer (PIP), which is defined as in-person, face-to-face prayer directed toward another individual’s well-being.
The researchers tracked changes in the participants’ self-reported pain and anxiety levels at multiple intervals: immediately after the five-minute session, at two weeks and at six weeks. (iStock)
The research team recruited 180 adult patients from a family medicine waiting room, according to a press release. All participants had previously reported experiencing moderate to severe pain, anxiety or both.
Following their standard medical appointments, the patients were randomly assigned to one of two groups: the prayer group, in which participants received five minutes of in-person Christian prayer delivered by a trained volunteer, and the music group, where they spent five minutes listening to music.
SEVERAL GROUPS SAY CANNABIS MAY HELP AGING AMERICANS MANAGE PAIN
The researchers then tracked changes in the participants’ self-reported pain and anxiety levels at multiple intervals: immediately after the five-minute session, at two weeks and at six weeks.
“It was very well-received,” Katherine Jacobson, MD, assistant professor of family and community medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told Fox News Digital. She noted that 97% of participants said they were “neutral or supportive” when asked about having this kind of prayer available as part of their medical visits.
An expert described the transformative power of prayer through “healing and comfort,” and shared that he himself once went through a long, painful recovery process. (iStock)
The study, which was published in The Annals of Family Medicine, revealed that while patients in both groups showed improvements, those in the prayer group reported substantially greater relief.
Bradley, who was not involved in the study, described the transformative power of prayer through “healing and comfort,” and shared that he himself once went through a long, painful recovery process.
“Daily prayer was essential in my healing journey,” he shared.
SIMPLE DAILY HABIT MAY HELP EASE DEPRESSION MORE THAN MEDICATION, RESEARCHERS SAY
For pain reduction, the individuals who received in-person prayer experienced greater drops in pain intensity immediately following the session. This superior level of relief remained evident during the two-week follow-up compared to the music group, the researchers found.
For anxiety reduction, the benefits of prayer were even longer-lasting. The prayer recipients reported significantly greater reductions in anxiety immediately after the session, and these positive effects remained statistically significant at both the two-week and six-week checkpoints.
The prayer recipients reported significantly greater reductions in anxiety immediately after the session, and these positive effects remained statistically significant at both the two-week and six-week checkpoints. (iStock)
“We expected that patients who expected prayer to work would benefit more, but that wasn’t what we found,” Jacobson said.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR HEALTH NEWSLETTER
“Religious affiliation, religious intensity and expectancy of healing did not predict who improved,” he went on. “Benefits appeared across a wide range of patients, including those not of the Christian faith and those who did not expect the intervention to help them.”
CLICK HERE FOR MORE HEALTH STORIES
The study had some limitations, the researchers acknowledged, primarily that it could not prove that prayer itself caused the improvements.
The team also noted that patients receiving prayer had human contact, while the music control group did not. The eye contact and gentle laying of hands from the prayer volunteers may have had an impact, as that type of contact is known to reduce pain.
The researchers suggested that PIP could serve as a low-cost, non-pharmacologic and effective complement to standard medical care. (iStock)
The authors hope to conduct future studies with a control group that receives interpersonal contact but no prayer.
TEST YOURSELF WITH OUR LATEST LIFESTYLE QUIZ
“For physicians and health systems, the study supports continuing to ask patients about spiritual care preferences as part of whole-person care, and considering whether trained Christian volunteer prayer practitioners could be integrated into outpatient settings for interested patients,” Jacobson said.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
The researchers suggest that PIP could serve as a low-cost, non-pharmacologic and effective complement to standard medical care.
Rather than replacing traditional treatments, the authors indicate that this type of brief, faith-based intervention could be integrated into primary care settings to help manage pain and anxiety.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
For many, surviving cancer comes with an automatic new lease on life but other survivors continue to experience physical and emotional challenges long after treatment ends.
Yoga may significantly reduce the insomnia, fatigue and mood disturbances many survivors endure after remission, a recent clinical trial found.
Mood disturbance and insomnia are “two of the most pervasive and troubling side effects experienced by cancer survivors for years after completing adjuvant treatments,” the researchers reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
SIMPLE DAILY HABIT MAY HELP EASE DEPRESSION MORE THAN MEDICATION, RESEARCHERS SAY
They noted that both symptoms can substantially inhibit survivors’ ability to perform everyday activities.
The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute, compared 204 cancer survivors receiving standard survivorship care alone with 206 survivors who paired standard care with the Yoga for Cancer Survivors (YOCAS) program. Most of the participants were female breast-cancer survivors.
A clinical trial showed that yoga may help ease symptoms cancer survivors experience after treatments. (iStock)
YOCAS is a four-week intervention that incorporates two types of yoga – hatha, which is traditional and more active, and restorative, which is more passive. Both forms involve slow, gentle movements, breathing exercises and mindfulness, according to the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), which published a news release on the study’s findings.
Participants in the YOCAS group practiced yoga, on average, for 180 minutes each week over the course of three sessions.
TEST YOURSELF WITH OUR LATEST LIFESTYLE QUIZ
At the end of the trial, the YOCAS participants reported overall improvements to mood, anxiety and fatigue, while the standard care group did not.
“Additionally, improvements in insomnia stemming from YOCAS yoga may be mediated by changes in overall [mood disturbance] and fatigue,” the researchers wrote.
“[The study is] an important advance because it offers survivors, who are likely already managing multiple medications, a non-pharmaceutical solution for reducing four different side effects at once,” Fumiko Chino, MD, a cancer researcher and associate professor in breast radiation oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center, told ASCO.
Cancer survivors often continue to struggle with physical and mental-health challenges after the disease has been successfully treated. (iStock)
Timothy Pearman, Ph.D., director of supportive oncology at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, told Fox News Digital he was not surprised by the results of the study.
“Yoga is one of the most widely studied and validated interventions for managing cancer-related fatigue, mood disturbance and overall physical health,” Pearman said.
Pearman said his wife, Jenny Finkel, is a yoga teacher and received her continuing education at Duke University’s integrative medicine program, which focuses on yoga for cancer patients.
“There are now a number of cancer-specific yoga teacher training programs nationwide,” Pearman said. “Yoga is a wonderful thing because it is very modifiable, meaning that even for people who have significant physical impairment, the exercises can be modified so that anyone can participate.”
He added that yoga is affordable, too, because “all you need is a mat and someone to show you how to do it.”
Osteoporosis, an increased risk of cardiac problems and issues with balance and stamina are other physical symptoms related to cancer treatment that yoga can help mitigate, Pearman said.
Cancer survivors who took part in an average of three yoga classes a week for four weeks reported reduced anxiety and fatigue, according to a recent study. (iStock)
Shari Botwin, a licensed clinical social worker based in Pennsylvania, is a thyroid-cancer survivor who specializes in working with victims of trauma, including cancer. She turned to yoga months after her diagnosis and told Fox News Digital the practice has been “transformative.”
According to Botwin, cancer survivors she’s worked with have dealt with emotional challenges that affect their healing process, including depression and survivor’s guilt. In addition to the physical relief yoga can provide, she said it can also offer “a supportive environment of peers, some of which are cancer thrivers.”
CLICK HERE FOR MORE LIFESTYLE STORIES
Botwin added that yoga can help survivors who have lost parts of their body reframe their thinking.
“It supports us into moving into a place of self-compassion rather than shame and self-hatred,” she said.
Yoga can help cancer survivors who struggle with guilt or shame to find a community of understanding peers, according to some experts. (iStock)
Almost any type of exercise can be beneficial for cancer survivors, Pearman said. He advises his patients to stick to the type of exercise they enjoyed prior to cancer.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
He also noted that free yoga classes geared toward cancer survivors are widely available through various non-profit organizations.
-
Los Angeles, Ca1 hour agoMan found stabbed to death in Huntington Park
-
Detroit, MI1 hour agoDetroit Grand Prix father-daughter volunteers help make winner’s circle moments shine
-
San Francisco, CA2 hours agoTony Vitello just lost the only Giants allies he has left
-
Dallas, TX2 hours agoFatal crash on LBJ Freeway in Dallas leaves 1 dead, multiple people hospitalized, police say
-
Miami, FL2 hours agoDeputies searching for 2 men accused of shooting man during attempted robbery in SW Miami-Dade
-
Boston, MA2 hours agoFriend of Worcester woman killed in Virginia I-95 crash ‘cannot believe she is gone.’ – The Boston Globe
-
Denver, CO2 hours agoDenver hockey’s Johnny Hicks wins DU Pioneers’ Male Athlete of the Year
-
Seattle, WA2 hours agoVikings stealing Nolan Teasley from Seahawks might be even worse than it appears
