DENVER | Colorado Gov. Jared Polis issued an executive order Thursday designed to address the state’s poor vaccination rates for children, but he insisted that he will respect existing religious and personal exemptions for parents unwilling to inoculate their children against communicable diseases.
Polis told the Sentinel the approach with the order will address many reasons why Colorado ranks near the bottom for immunization rates among U.S. states.
“There are cost reasons, there are geographic reasons,” Polis said. “There are, of course, reasons of faith and other matters of conscience. But I don’t believe or see any evidence of that as the biggest driver in any way, shape or form.”
Polis’ order on Thursday also comes amid a national resurgence of measles that has affected more than 1,000 people, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some 87.4% of Colorado kindergarten students had vaccinations for measles, mumps and rubella in the 2018-19 school year, down 1.3% from the previous year, according to the state Department of Public Health and Environment. For highly-contagious measles, the CDC recommends a 92% threshold to maintain herd immunity.
More than 9,400 children were hospitalized or treated at emergency rooms for vaccine-preventable diseases in 2017, the state Department of Public Health and Environment says.
The state needs to better inform residents about the benefits of vaccines, make parents aware of low-cost vaccination programs, seek out underserved residents and develop a strategy to confront an anti-vaccination movement that contends some shots are unsafe despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, said Tony Cappello, director of the department’s Disease Control and Environmental Epidemiology division.
“We need to provide fact-based information to parents so they can make educated, informed decisions,” Cappello told a news conference at Children’s Hospital Colorado in Denver. “This means dispelling misinformation about vaccinations and having correct information in the hands of parents,” he said.
Polis’ order focuses on the education and information front.
The order calls for state officials to work more closely with local health specialists to promote vaccination; studying the reasons for what the governor calls “vaccine hesitancy” among parents, and developing information strategies to address those concerns; and helping families on Medicaid and residents in rural and other underserved areas gain access to and pay for recommended vaccines.
Polis told the Sentinel the order is comprehensive.
“It’s a lot more than education,” Polis said. “It is and I don’t want to underplay education, but it’s about access and convenience for parents and making the choice to immunize their child. There’s areas in our state where you have to drive an hour, where parents don’t have regular checkups for their kids. So we’re really looking at all of those drivers that work.”
The state allows parents to opt out of required school vaccinations for medical, religious and philosophical reasons. Polis, who’s described himself as a libertarian Democrat, stressed Thursday he won’t change that policy.
“We believe that Colorado families should be making their own health care decisions,” he said. “We really view this as the third way between the government forcing people to get shots, which is counterproductive, and simply allowing these rates to go down, which is counterproductive to the public health and results in people dying.”
When asked about whether Polis would change course if there was an outbreak in Colorado, he said this executive order is preventing that.
“We’re acting before there is an outbreak. This is a critical public health issue for us to address. Vaccines are an effective and safe tool to prevent the spread of measles and other vaccine-preventable disease. That’s why from the very start we were trying to change the trajectory of where Colorado is going. It was one of our top goals with CDPHE.”
Even so, Polis admitted there is a “likelihood” for an outbreak.
This spring, hundreds of parents, their children in tow, swarmed the state Capitol to oppose a bill that would have made it harder to qualify for religious or personal exemptions. The bill stalled in the Legislature.
Lawmakers in Oregon, which has one of the highest rates of unvaccinated kindergartners in the country, also killed a bill this year to make it harder for families to opt out.
But next-door Washington state ended most exemptions for the measles vaccine. Maine eliminated religious and philosophical exemptions, and New York legislators were poised Thursday to eliminate a religious exemption.
The order directs the state health department to implement a public education and outreach campaign to address vaccine hesitancy. The order says that campaign would be “subject to available funds.”
Polis said he believes bolstering those funds would be “a good investment when we look at our agenda for saving people money on healthcare.”
According to the state, it cost $55 million to treat vaccine-preventable diseases in Colorado children in 2017.
— The Associated Press contributed to this story.
