Medical Exemptions Jumped After California Ended ‘Personal Belief’ Excuse for School-Mandated Vaccinations

The rate of medical exemptions for immunizations for incoming kindergartners rose sharply the year after California eliminated the personal-belief exemption, a new study finds.

Incoming kindergartener Jeremy Conner, 5, reacts to a measles, mumps and rubella vaccination (MMR) as his father Mark Conner tries to comfort him Aug. 26, 2002, in Santa Ana.
(Credit: David McNew/Getty Images)

The results, published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., hint that some parents who don’t want to vaccinate may have found doctors willing to give medical exemptions to students — a potential trend that may undercut the collective protection against contagious diseases that the state law sought to bolster.

When students enroll in school, they’re required to show proof that they were vaccinated against diseases such as polio, chickenpox and measles — dangerous infections that in many cases can spread quickly through a group. Students can be exempted from that requirement if they have a medical condition that prevents them from getting immunized — pediatric cancer, for example, or demonstrated adverse reactions to vaccination. But in most states, parents can also get exemptions based on personal beliefs.

California Senate Bill 277, passed in 2015, removed those personal-belief exemptions — a move that came on the heels of a 2014 measles outbreak that originated at Disneyland. That outbreak was likely exacerbated by low vaccination rates, an earlier analysis found.

Read the full story on LATimes.com.

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