Georgia’s kindergarten vaccination rates decline as more parents claim exemptions

New childhood vaccination data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that Georgia vaccination rates are decreasing, with 86.8% of the state’s children fully up-to-date on their required vaccines when they entered kindergarten last year.

Detailed, local level data is important because “vaccination behavior and vaccine exemption behavior is a very socially and spatially clustered behavior,” Alison Buttenheim, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s nursing school said during a June media briefing. “We tend to see it in clumps.”