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Vaccination rules strengthened in Colorado

Parents asked to reaffirm opt-out decision regularly
Next year, parents locally and across Colorado will be required to affirm their decision not to vaccinate their school-aged children annually.

In Colorado, parents have been able to opt their children out of immunizations for nonmedical reasons with a single signature, leading to one of the highest rates of unvaccinated children nationally.

But now the Colorado Board of Health is asking parents to consider their decision to opt their children out of vaccines far more frequently.

“I do believe this is a step in the right direction, since parents that opt out have to reaffirm their decision on a regular basis,” said Vangi McCoy, the Montelores Early Childhood Council coordinator for Dolores and Montezuma counties. She testified at the state Legislature about the importance of the change in the law in 2014.

The new rules were approved April 15 at the state level, but they will not go into effect until July 2016.

Parents will be required to turn in exemption forms to their child care center every time their young child would be required to get a vaccination.

Once a child enters school, parents would be required to turn in a vaccination-exemption form each year. In addition, schools will have to submit data on immunization and exemption rates to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment each year.

This information will be publicly available online so that parents can check to see what percentage of children in an individual school have not been immunized.

“Parents want to be empowered with that kind of information,” said Stephanie Wasserman, executive director of the Colorado Children’s Immunization Coalition.

This is especially important for parents of children who may have autoimmune disorders or cancer and are particularly susceptible to infectious diseases, she said. It also will provide the state with more reliable data on exemptions.

In the 2013-14 school year across Colorado, 4.6 percent of kindergartners, or about 3,000, had an exemption for one or more of the required immunizations, she said.

The coalition and other advocates had supported a version of the bill that would have required parents to take an online module or provide proof of speaking with a health-care professional before opting their children out of a vaccine.

While the change in vaccination laws are not as stringent as the one originally proposed, advocates are hopeful the frequent exemptions may encourage parents to at least reconsider getting their child vaccinated, especially during high-profile outbreaks of infectious diseases, McCoy said.

Locally, Durango School District 9-R tracks students who are exempted from vaccinations, and the district will utilize that same system to develop procedures to notify families when new exemption forms are due, said district spokeswoman Julie Popp.

mshinn@durangoherald.com

Vaccination exemptions

Here is the percentage of students exempted from vaccinations in Durango School District 9-R by school. The figure listed after the school is the percentage of students exempted from vaccinations:

Durango High School, 7 percent.

Big Picture High school, 7 percent.

Escalante Middle School, 15.6 percent.

Florida Mesa Elementary, 8.9 percent.

Miller Middle School, 11 percent.

Needham Elementary, 0 percent.

Park Elementary, 10 percent.

Riverview Elementary, 14.6 percent.

Sunnyside Elementary, 10 percent.

Animas Valley Elementary, 11 percent.

Fort Lewis Mesa Elementary, 9 percent.

Source: Durango School District 9-R



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