Sentences with phrase «nonmedical exemptions»
The phrase "nonmedical exemptions" refers to when someone is allowed to skip or avoid a required medical treatment or vaccine for reasons that are not related to their health or medical condition. Full definition
The researchers analyzed state - level rates of nonmedical exemptions at school entry from 1991 through 2004 and data for incidence of pertussis from 1986 through 2004 for individuals age 18 years or younger.
medicalnewstoday.com
In the new study, published September 30 in Pediatrics, lead author Jessica Atwell and her colleagues mapped «clusters» — statistically unusual aggregations — of nonmedical exemptions for kindergartners between 2005 and 2010.
Colgrove and his co-author, Abigail Lowin of Columbia Law School, suggest there are alternatives to eliminating nonmedical exemptions entirely.
This study also backs up the results in a 2008 study led by Omer that similarly found overlaps in pertussis outbreaks and nonmedical exemptions in Michigan during an 11 - year period.
That same year, at least twelve states considered bills on nonmedical exemptions.
They found policy changes remain controversial and alternatives exist to eliminating nonmedical exemptions entirely.
«When you look at statewide or countywide data, the increases in nonmedical exemptions don't look that significant,» Atwell says, «but when you look at community - wide coverage, it is much lower than the threshold needed to maintain herd immunity in some areas.»
While all 50 states allow exemptions for children who have a valid medical reason, and almost all states allow nonmedical exemptions for parents with either religious or philosophical objections, the political climate has recently shifted in favor of making exemptions more difficult to obtain.
As of March 2006, all states permitted medical exemptions to school and daycare immunization requirements; 48 states allowed religious exemptions; and 19 states had a provision for personal belief exemptions, such as religious, philosophical, and any other unspecified nonmedical exemption.
Our findings support the need for effective administrative controls over granting nonmedical exemptions.
For more than 30 years, Mississippi and West Virginia were the only states in the country that disallowed nonmedical exemptions to mandatory school vaccination laws for religious or philosophical reasons, until they were joined by California last year.
Many public health professionals are recommending retaining nonmedical exemptions but making them more difficult to obtain, requiring parents to receive educational counseling from a licensed health care provider, or to renew the exemption annually.
«Will more states ban nonmedical exemptions for childhood vaccination?
Saad B. Omer, M.B.B.S., M.P.H., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and colleagues conducted a study to determine if the rates of nonmedical exemptions differ and have been increasing in states that offer only religious vs. personal belief exemptions, and if the incidence of pertussis is associated with policies of granting personal belief exemptions and ease of obtaining exemptions.
Meanwhile, a PAC named Texans for Vaccine Choice has sprung up after state Representative Jason Villalba, a Republican lawyer from Dallas, proposed scrapping nonmedical exemptions last year.
Moreover, state - level policies on nonmedical exemptions and documentation of immunization status should be viewed as part of the efforts to control or eliminate vaccine - preventable diseases,» the authors conclude.
In 2015, California, long known as a state with lenient provisions and high rates of opting out, followed the example of Mississippi and West Virginia and eliminated nonmedical exemptions.
«There are a lot of factors, including waning immunity from the vaccine, increased case detection and possible changes in circulating strains,» she says, «but our study shows that nonmedical exemptions and clustering of unvaccinated individuals may have also played a role.»
Census tracts within a nonmedical exemption cluster were 2.5 times more likely to be within a pertussis cluster, even after accounting for population characteristics including racial demographics, population density, household income, average family size, percentage of residents with a college degree and location within a metropolitan area.
Residents living in a census tract within a nonmedical exemption cluster were 20 percent more likely to catch pertussis than those outside a cluster, the analysis revealed.
California's rates of nonmedical exemptions tripled from 0.77 percent in 2000 to 2.33 percent in 2010, and some schools had 2010 nonmedical exemption rates as high as 84 percent.
From 2001 through 2004, states that permitted personal belief exemptions had higher nonmedical exemption rates than states that offered only religious exemptions, and states that easily granted exemptions had higher nonmedical exemption rates in 2002 through 2003 compared with states with medium and difficult exemption processes.