{"id":11207,"date":"2026-01-14T16:49:37","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T22:49:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11207"},"modified":"2026-01-14T16:49:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T22:49:40","slug":"nonmedical-childhood-vaccination-exemptions-are-climbing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/01\/14\/nonmedical-childhood-vaccination-exemptions-are-climbing\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonmedical Childhood Vaccination Exemptions Are Climbing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.medpagetoday.com\/pediatrics\/vaccines\/119418\">MedPageToday<\/a> Nonmedical exemptions to childhood vaccination requirements are on the rise, with substantial variation among U.S. counties and states, an analysis of county-level data showed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The median rate of nonmedical vaccination exemptions for personal beliefs or religious reasons increased from 0.6% in 2010-2011 to 3.1% in 2023-2024, while the rate of medical exemptions remained steady, reported Nathan Lo, MD, PhD, of Stanford University in California, and colleagues in a research letter in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jama\/fullarticle\/10.1001\/jama.2025.24407?guestAccessKey=310c24bc-8a41-42b2-9d62-9cc5824b4882&amp;utm_source=For_The_Media&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=ftm_links&amp;utm_content=tfl&amp;utm_term=011426\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"JAMA, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>JAMA<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The COVID-19 pandemic was an exemption turning point. While the median nonmedical exemption rate rose by 0.11 percentage points every year from 2010 to 2020 (95% CI 0.10-0.12), it rose 0.52 percentage points annually from 2021 to 2024 (95% CI 0.48-0.57). During this later time period, 53.5% of the 2,842 counties with data available over both time periods reported an increase in nonmedical exemptions greater than 1%, and 5.3% of counties reported an increase greater than 5%.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MedPageToday Nonmedical exemptions to childhood vaccination requirements are on the rise, with substantial variation among U.S. counties and states, an analysis of county-level data showed. The median rate of nonmedical vaccination exemptions for personal beliefs or religious reasons increased from 0.6% in 2010-2011 to 3.1% in 2023-2024, while the rate of medical exemptions remained steady, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vaccine-headlines"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11208,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11207\/revisions\/11208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}