Demand clarity on measles threat
I’m what some researchers call an information-seeking parent. I don’t make big decisions lightly. They typically involve hours of reading and sometimes even a spreadsheet.
So naturally, when I became pregnant, I researched the best ways to keep my child safe. I read countless reviews and articles on the safest car seats, bassinets and baby carriers available so I could make the best choices for my family.
When it came time to choose a child care provider, however, I was extra thorough. I wanted to ensure the site I chose would be an enriching, nurturing and — above all — safe environment for my baby. So I looked up prospective centers on the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services website. I talked to other parents. And when I toured each facility, I asked a lot of questions, including what the center’s vaccination rates were.
After spending a decade working in public health, the question of vaccinations is an important one to me. I’ve worked with families who lost their kids to vaccine-preventable diseases like pertussis, also known as whooping cough. I grieved for them — how could you not? If I wasn’t going to play around with baby carriers, I surely wasn’t going to roll the dice on something like that.
Even though vaccines are technically required for kids attending child care centers, Texas is one of 47 states that allow parents to opt out of vaccines for their kids in day care for non-medical reasons. They need only complete the paperwork.
At the time my firstborn enrolled in child care, measles had just struck Disneyland in California and spread across the United States.
The threat of a measles outbreak striking my child’s care center made me nervous. It still does. Texas has had 10 confirmed cases of the virus so far in 2019 — four of which have been in Harris County, where my children live and attend child care daily.
Like a lot of vaccine-preventable diseases, measles can be life-threatening to small children like mine. It kills more than 100,000 people a year worldwide. While vaccination is an important step parents can take to protect their children, some vaccinated kids (about 3 out of 100) won’t develop enough immunity to protect them in the event of an outbreak, especially if they — like my children — are too young to get the second dose of the vaccine.
High vaccination completion rates are the best defense we have against this dangerous disease, and parents like me depend on them to help keep our kids safe.
When I asked child care facilities what their vaccination rates were, however, their responses ranged from indignant to evasive.
Several insisted — inaccurately — it was illegal to tell parents the center’s coverage rates.
It was frustrating. Like any parent, I just wanted to make the best decision for my family, and I needed more information to do that — information that, according to Texas state law, should have been available to me.
Let me be clear. Nothing I asked for violated federal privacy laws. Vaccination coverage rates are a simple percentage telling me what proportion of the kids enrolled at the center had vaccinations on file. I didn’t want to know what specific kids weren’t vaccinated. What I wanted to know was: If measles struck Houston, how protected would my children be?
Parents shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to get a straight answer to a reasonable question.
State laws guiding child care providers should be updated to clarify that facilities have permission to disclose vaccination coverage information to those who request it.
House Bill 1966, a bill sponsored by state Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, would do just that.
If this bill becomes law (and it should), it wouldn’t force facilities to disclose the information if they don’t want to.
Organizations would still be free to write in-house policies guiding what information they will or won’t disclose. It would simply make the law more clear.
This isn’t an earth-shattering request. And it could go a long way to helping parents get the information they need to make the best choices for their families.