PORT HURON, Mich. — State health officials urged parents in several counties to vaccinate babies against measles ahead of schedule this spring as cases multiplied in Michigan. The outbreaks of the highly contagious virus — which can lead to brain swelling, deafness, and death — came as parents are opting school-age kids out of vaccinations at a record-high rate.
It’s a situation state officials have spent more than a decade trying to avoid. For years, they’ve been trying to make it harder for parents to send their kids to school unvaccinated.
But those efforts have backfired in places like St. Clair County, in Michigan’s conservative Thumb region. Remington Nevin, the county’s medical director, has declared “a new era of vaccine choice.” Local parents there can now bypass the usual protocols and get school vaccine waivers via email, days after they fill out a brief digital form.
State health officials aren’t fighting it.
Remington Nevin is the medical director for the St. Clair County Health Department in Michigan. The county is the first in the state to make vaccine waivers available to parents entirely online. Parents who have “felt pressured” into getting vaccines “are going to experience a new era of vaccine choice in St. Clair County,” Nevin said at a January board meeting. (Kate Wells/KFF Health News)
