The vast majority of Colorado schoolkids are receiving the recommended immunizations, but the state Health Department on Tuesday released a new tool to help parents look more locally.
The department collected vaccination data for more than 850,000 kids in 1,801 schools during the 2016-17 school year. The research found that 93.4 percent of students were up-to-date on their recommended immunizations. Only 2.6 percent of students’ parents or guardians had claimed an exemption from vaccinations, the large majority of those falling under the “personal exemption” heading. Exemptions for religious or medical reasons each made up less than 10 percent of the total exemptions.
In a first, the department also made school and district-level data on immunizations easily available to the public, through a website where parents can search for individual schools or download numbers from every school all at once. The numbers can also be accessed by going to www.coloradoimmunizations.com.
The Health Department also collected data from child care facilities and preschools, and it made the numbers available on the same website.
“All kids need a safe place to learn and grow, and vaccines are an essential part of that,” Larry Wolk, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said in a statement accompanying the data’s release. “It’s important for parents — especially those with children who have weakened immune systems — to have information about their school’s or child care facility’s vaccination rate. Those are facts they can consider when deciding which school or child care their child attends.”
Colorado law requires schoolkids and children in licensed day cares to receive certain vaccinations, unless their parent or guardian fills out an exemption form. Such exemptions are controversial, with parents on one side saying the process is burdensome and infringes on parental choice and parents on the other side arguing that high exemption rates threaten the health of all kids, especially medically fragile ones.
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In the new numbers, 14 schools statewide have a 100 percent up-to-date immunization rate, and one school district — Eads RE-1 in Kiowa County — has a perfect record for all of its schools. Three schools in the state have an exemption rate above 50 percent. The district with the highest exemption rate is Moffat Consolidated School District 2, in the San Luis Valley, where nearly a quarter of students have an exemption.
Most of the outliers on either end, statewide, are small schools and districts. For districts with at least 5,000 students, Adams 14 school district in Commerce City has the highest rate, with more than 98 percent of students up-to-date on their immunizations. The Charter School Institute, the state’s authorizer of charter schools that don’t belong to a school district, has the highest exemption rate. Poudre School District in Larimer County is next, with an exemption rate above 5 percent.
Colorado school immunization rates
Use the filters to choose a school district and school type. Hover over color bar for details.
Source: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
