Political Leanings and Mean Household Incomes Relationship to Vaccine Exemptions

• In Event: Red and Blue: Partisian Divisions in US Health Policy

Abstract

Childhood immunizations are an important tool to keep a healthy populations and to maintain a "herd immunity" to protect those who cannot be vaccinated. Vaccines are an easy way to keep communities healthy and allow public health resources to be used in other areas. Vaccine exemptions allow parents or guardians to opt their child out of receiving required childhood vaccinations. All fifty states allow medical exemptions but it is up to each individual state to decide if they will accept religious and philosophical exemptions. Currently only three states, Mississippi, West Virginia, and California (as of 2016) only allow medical exemptions. Virginia and Missouri only offer religious exemptions for certain vaccines or for non-public school children. Forty-seven states offer some form of religious exemptions and 18 offer philosophical exemptions. This conference paper will look at the number of exemptions given and see if there is a correlation between political leaning (red, blue, or swing) and median household incomes at both the county and states level. As the number of parents opting their children out of regular childhood immunizations is increasing, it will be expected that we will see greater outbreaks, that have predominately been kept to close knit communities. Preliminary findings from Washington state indicate that liberal, wealthier counties are seeing an larger number of exemptions versus more conservative counties. This will affect public health priorities and divert public health resources. This conference paper will also look at incident rates and outbreaks of diseases in conjunction to the number and type of exemptions granted, at the state and county level.

Author

• Steffanie Sinclair Chritz, Washington State University