Mill Valley Parents Reject Vaccines at a Higher Rate Than State and Marin County Averages

An article in Slate earlier this month asked whether parents who decline to immunize their children should be sued or charged with a crime when their decision leads to an outbreak of illness.

The piece pointed to a 2008 San Diego incident where an unvaccinated 7-year-old boy caught measles in Switzerland and then passed the virus on to 11 other unvaccinated kids.

The Slate article comes as Marin County public health officer Dr. Matthew Willis and his colleagues across the country are reminding parents to bring proof of vaccinations when enrolling their children in school.

In California, kindergartners need five DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis), four polio, three hepatitis B, two MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) and one varicella (chickenpox) shot.

However, California is one of 18 states where parents may still enroll students who have not been immunized if they claim an exemption due to personal beliefs. Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law last fall a bill requiring parents who exclude their children from immunization requirements to submit a signed statement that they received information about risks and benefits of vaccines. The bill was supported by the Marin County Board of Supervisors.

In doing so, however, Brown directed the state Department of Health to provide a way for people whose religious beliefs preclude vaccinations from having to seek a health care practitioner's signature.

Out of the 449 children who enrolled as kindergarteners in Mill Valley last year, nearly 8.7 percent started school without having received the battery of vaccinations required by the state because of the personal beliefs of their parents or guardians.

That figure is considerably higher than the statewide average of 2.7 percent and higher than the average for Marin County of 7.8 percent. Marin's average has skyrocketed since 2005, when the personal belief exemption rate in Marin was just 4.2 percent.

Mill Valley is also home to one school that has among the highest personal belief exemption rates in California. Greenwood School, the Waldorf-inspired school downtown, had two-thirds of its incoming kindergarteners cite a PBE in 2012-2013, which was down from a whopping 79 percent exemption rate in 2011-2012.

Mill Valley's three private schools registered a personal belief exemption rate in 2012-2013 of 10.8 percent, compared to an 8.3 percent rate for its five public schools.

A study by the California Department of Public Health in 2010 found that 80 percent of parents who don't immunize their kids do so because they believe the vaccines pose a health risk.

Sharayn Forkel, the county's immunization coordinator, told the Marin Independent Journal that many parents are still concerned that vaccines will cause autism despite a mountain of medical evidence refuting the idea.

One of the most vocal critics of vaccines, former Playboy model Jenny McCarthy, is set to become a co-host of the morning TV talk show The View next month. McCarthy has repeatedly claimed that vaccines played a major role in giving her son autism.