Tony Yang, associate professor in the Department of Health Administration and Policy, co-authored a research letter estimating the impact of Senate Bill 277 on nonmedical exemptions (NME) from vaccinations in California. The letter appears in JAMA Pediatrics.
SB 277 narrows exceptions to school-entry vaccine mandates; however, a “grandfather clause” included in the bill permits students who already have an NME to remain in school until the next vaccination checkpoint, which is seventh grade in California.
Yang and his co-authors, Paul Delameter and Timothy Leslie of the Department of Geography at Mason, used the California Department of Public Health’s Immunization Assessment Results and projected enrollment from the Department of Education to estimate the number of students with NMEs in California schools from 2015 to 2022. They conclude that, as a result of the grandfather clause in SB 277, the effects of the bill will not be fully realized until 2022, once NMEs are fully phased out of the system. Read the full letter and read the authors’ study about sociodemographic predictors of vaccine exemptions in California.