Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Medical Exemption Rates Hint Parents May Have Found Workaround To California Vaccination Law
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. 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. (Khan, 9/5)
Dr. Tara Zandvliet was inundated with calls and emails from parents last year, after California passed a law nixing personal beliefs as an exemption from school vaccinations. Suddenly, many parents sought exemptions for medical reasons. Someone even faked two medical exemption forms purportedly written by the San Diego pediatrician, copying a legitimate document she’d provided for a patient and writing in the names of students she’d never treated, she said. She learned of the forgeries only when the school called for verification. (Ibarra and Feder Ostrov, 9/5)
In other news —
A two-year-old political action committee is trying to turn childhood vaccines into a wedge issue in state Republican primaries, by scoring lawmakers on efforts to allow parents to claim broader exemptions from mandatory childhood vaccinations. (Rayasam, 9/1)
