As controversy over childhood vaccinations rages nationwide, student immunization rates in Marblehead have remained steady over the past three years, with most schools reporting 90% or more of pupils have gotten all vaccines required by state law.
Dr. Thomas Massaro, a retired pediatrician and the chair of the town’s Board of Health, said the community’s demographics likely play a key role in maintaining consistent vaccination rates.
“Massachusetts is a pretty progressive state, and Marblehead is consistent with that,” he said. “About 77% of residents have at least one bachelor’s degree, and it’s an affluent community. People understand the benefits of vaccines, they judge them, and they decide to go ahead.”
Statewide, the number of students with all vaccines required for school averages 94.4% for kindergarten students and 90.7% for grade 7 students. Pupils in some parts of Massachusetts are getting vaccinated less and requesting more exemptions in recent years, Department of Public Health data shows. Vaccination rates have been decreasing nationally since the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for kindergartners and as more parents question their effectiveness, though Massachusetts was recently rated by one national study as the state with the highest vaccine rates for all residents.
State and local governments have the authority to impose vaccine requirements for students in their communities, though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has traditionally recommended a vaccine schedule for those attending school. The CDC announced this month it was dropping recommendations that school-age children get six vaccines previously encouraged for students, including those aimed at preventing respiratory infections, Hepatitis A and B, and meningitis. Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, immediately announced students in Massachusetts would still be required to get all vaccines mandated by state law, which include some of those eliminated by the CDC.
Massachusetts children, from those attending day care and pre-school programs through those attending college in the commonwealth, are required to get a slate of vaccines as they progress through grades, including those preventing chickenpox, polio, diphtheria and measles, among others.
In December, state officials issued an alert about potential measles exposure in Massachusetts after an out-of-state visitor contracted the disease. Since 2020, there has been only one case of a Massachusetts resident getting the measles, state records show.
But for the first time in three decades, the number of measles cases in the U.S. rose to over 2,000 last year, according to the CDC. All 50 states require vaccinations for students, though Republican Florida lawmakers, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, have been battling to limit vaccine requirements.
Each year, the Massachusetts DPH surveys all day care, pre-school and kindergarten programs and middle and high schools, to gather immunization data on those in seventh and 12th grade. Those grade levels are targeted to align with the required state-required vaccines for children of those ages.
Students can request a medical exemption from the vaccines if certified by their physician or a state can waive exemptions if mandated immunizations conflict with a student’s religious beliefs. Like the rest of the nation, medical and religious student vaccine exemption rates in Massachusetts have risen in the past four years, according to data shows.
In Marblehead, exemption rates across all programs and schools have hovered between 0% and 6% at the highest since 2022, DPH data shows. A bill pending in the Massachusetts legislature would remove the ability for a student to obtain religious exemptions, mirroring New York, Maine and Connecticut and California, which have eliminated them.
Massaro said the pandemic undermined public trust in government across age groups.
“One of the long-term negative consequences of the pandemic was a loss of faith and trust in public health,” he said. “Vaccines are the prime face of public health to young people. If the pandemic caused overall questions about whether they can trust the CDC or FDA, then it’s not surprising there’s been a slight diminution.”
Massaro also warned that misinformation circulating at the federal level may further undermine confidence.
“We’re subject to a much bigger decline with all the misleading information coming out of (the U.S. Department of) Health and Human Services right now,” he said.
Polls by the Kaiser Family Foundation show widening partisan divides over support for routine childhood vaccinations. At the same time, states have begun to diverge significantly in how they regulate school immunization requirements. New York and California eliminated nonmedical exemptions after large measles outbreaks in the past decade. Other states have moved in the opposite direction. Idaho, Oklahoma and Utah have expanded or clarified access to exemptions, reflecting the broader national debate.
“It is a balance between the individual and the community,” Massaro said. “People need to trust the systems that protect them.”
This story was produced as part of Boston University Professor Maggie Mulvihill’s Data Journalism course in an ongoing collaboration with the Current.
