More parents than ever are choosing to not vaccinate their children because of medical, religious or philosophical reasons in Western Pennsylvania.

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The data, tracked annually by the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Safe Schools database and by way of the Pennsylvania School Immunization Law Report (SILR), showed that for the 2017-18 school year, most counties in Pennsylvania either saw increases in the number of unvaccinated children or the percentage of those exempt from vaccination stayed the same.

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The report chronicles the immunization status of students in kindergarten through seventh grade in public or private schools throughout the state. A child may have more than one exemption, such as both medical and religious. Home-schooled children report to the school district they live in and are required to follow the same requirements as children attending in-person school.

Allegheny, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties all saw increases in exemptions based on religious beliefs, while Westmoreland and Allegheny counties saw slight decreases in philosophical exemptions and medical exemptions.

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According to the database, 1,210 students in these four counties entered the 2017-18 school year without vaccinations — around 70 more students than the previous school year, where the database recorded that 1,139 children went without vaccinations.

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Pennsylvania saw collective increases for both religious and philosophical exemptions, and the number for medically exempt students stayed the same, rounding out at 0.6% for a total of 1,640 medically exempt students in the counties that data was collected from across the state. 

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Despite the three exemption qualifications, Vickie McCullough, a certified school nurse and nursing department head for Belle Vernon Area School District, said there are many other reasons why families choose to not vaccinate their children, according to parents.

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Since the law was passed to allow the exemptions in Pennsylvania, McCullough said more parents than ever choose not to vaccinate under the belief that vaccination leads to adverse effects, potentially causing autism. 

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“That myth has been proven false by the medical community,” McCullough insisted. “But the parents don’t have to tell us exactly why they’re choosing to not vaccinate; they just have to tell us morally that they do not want to do so.”

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All 50 states allow for medical exemptions in schools. Forty-five allow religious exemptions and 15 permit abstention on philosophical reasons.

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Nicholle Frantz considers her decision to not vaccinate her children health-related. Her daughter was diagnosed with rotavirus two weeks after getting a flu vaccine — something she said her doctor routinely passed off as a cold or the flu. Frantz sought out another doctor for a second opinion, and her child received a rotavirus diagnosis. 

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Frantz is the mother of three children, a 10-month old baby and two others who attend school in McKeesport. Her 5-year-old is a kindergarten student and her 8-year-old is in third grade. She also has a stepson who is fully vaccinated.

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When their 5-year-old wasn’t quite yet two, Frantz and her partner made the decision to opt out of vaccinations because the child had what Frantz called “adverse effects” after vaccination, citing chronic ear infections. 

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Frantz didn’t see this as a coincidence, and their 10-month-old remains completely unvaxxed as a result. 

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“Some would assume this is an experiment, but it’s just timing of gathering research and proper information about vaccines that wasn’t published for parents,” Frantz said. “We were led to not vaccinate.”

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McCullough stressed that vaccinations are widely accepted in the medical community as integral parts of school health and said she advocates for every child to be properly vaccinated.

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“I feel that immunizations are of utmost importance with communicable disease prevention, and the medical community has shown this through years of research and immunizing children,” McCullough said, citing that polio was eradicated in America because of the development of its vaccine.

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Nate Wardel, press secretary of the state Department of Health, said his office saw a sharp increase in vaccination exemptions beginning in 2017.

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“We saw vaccination rates that were not at the level we wanted to be,” he said. “For some, it was the measles and mumps. The vaccination rate was below 90% when the Wolf administration took office. We did take some effort to increase vaccination rates and encourage people to get vaccinated.”

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Wardel and McCullough agree that anti-vaccination numbers continue to rise, due in part to the law permitting the legal right to use a religious or philosophical exemption, the community-building surrounding anti-vaccination as well as celebrity influence.

“Sometimes it depends on their religion,” McCullough said. “Sometimes it just depends on the personal feelings about any type of medication or anything being injected into the body.”

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Most religions have no overt prohibition against vaccines, but some have considerations concerning injecting the body or “killing” living organisms considered to be found in vaccines, according to research completed by Vanderbilt Faculty and Staff Health. For major religions such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Judaism, there are no widely common, explicit regulations concerning vaccination.

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“You have people that have a large following as celebrities, but they aren’t the experts on science and health,” Wordel said, citing actress Jessica Biel as a public anti-vaxx advocate. “They have a wide audience through social media to spread their views.”

Frantz’s decision for vaccination exemption comes from a place of personal experience as well as those of her friends. She said she’s known friends to miscarry or have stillbirths after they were vaccinated and said she knows families who have lost children from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, SIDS, after receiving a vaccine.

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“Who is going to be held responsible if my child suffers a vaccine injury?” she asked. “Vaccine makers are protected from that ... fevers, increased sleep and rashes are never normal, especially after a vaccination.”

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Wordel said the subject of vaccines are getting more buzz than ever, from both supporters and skeptics.

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“There’s an increase in awareness of vaccinations from a large standpoint,” he said. “You have a lot of news articles and reports about the increase of infectious diseases, and we have had 13 measles cases in Pennsylvania this year. We had a mumps outbreak at Temple University, so Pennsylvania has not been immune from these infectious disease outbreaks.” McCullough said most of the vaccine-related calls she fields are from parents with children who have diagnoses that make them more susceptible to communicable diseases.

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“That’s something we try to educate everyone on, to vaccinate to prevent communicable diseases, which have been pretty much eradicated with vaccines now,” McCullough said. “For instance, any child that’s gone through treatment for cancer, or if a child has an immunosuppressive diagnosis or conditions that make them more at risk to contract anything that’s communicable, like measles, chicken pox, mumps or pertussis. They just can’t fight it off as well.”

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McCullough said if there’s an outbreak of these diseases, those children with conditions that make them more susceptible are excluded from school — sometimes for several weeks at a time. “It could go from a couple weeks to a lengthy period if other students who are not immunized or even fully immunized keep coming down with the disease,” he said.

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Wordel said the Department of Health considers populations in danger of contracting a disease when the number varies 5% below the total population.

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“When the percent of vaccinated students drops below 95%, then we start to worry there’s a potential for infectious disease to spread as opposed to a community with a higher vaccination rate,” Wordel said.

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Frantz said she’s received non-stop criticism for her choice to not vaccinate her children, but sees this criticism as a teaching moment for other parents she wants to influence.

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“Everyone believes they’re the perfect parent,” Frantz said. “In that case, I like to give people a better understanding by simply educating them on what they’re not told. I know a lot of parents who have chosen to not vaccinate that I’ve met simply by being vocal about my choice.”

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Wordel and McCullough pointed to primary care doctors and pediatricians as the main source for vaccine-related issues, citing them as the best sources of information on vaccines.

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“It comes from their pediatricians, not just us,” she said. “Between both of us advocating to immunize, that’s all we can do. We can advocate and educate, but parents ultimately have the final choice at this point.”

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This original story is protected by a paywall. 

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