L ike other states, Colorado requires vaccination records on a recommended schedule for children being enrolled in child care environments and schools. Like other states, Colorado allows people with religious views against vaccines or medical conditions that would make the vaccines dangerous to officially opt out.

But we have an added, very liberal policy on "personal belief." According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, about 3,000 Colorado kindergartners started school last year without being vaccinated. And 93 percent of them were unvaccinated because of their parent or guardian's personal beliefs. What's more, the personal belief exemption is only required to be completed once and never has to be revisited.

The health department and other stakeholders are recommending some changes. They note that Colorado is in its second year of a whooping cough epidemic, with more than 1,100 cases reported this year. The group says the rate of whooping cough is 41 higher here than it is with states with stronger vaccination exemption requirements.

Two recommendations by the group would be for parents to talk to a medical professional about the personal beliefs leading to their choice, and another would require an annual renewal of the exemption.

We have long advocated for more awareness of herd immunity and educating parents about what could be at stake. We acknowledge that parents don't want to be told what to do by public health departments.


But the problem is the trend of eschewing vaccines for children is less about personal-familial beliefs than it is about bad science and fear-mongering by the people who still cling to a discredited, retracted study about autism.

It's not just the poor or underinsured who have poor vaccination records. They should already be benefiting from the health care reform that mandates that insurance policies cover vaccines without a co-pay.

Instead, it's too often people who could readily pay a co-pay, but have "educated" themselves through the internet message boards and celebrity-driven campaigns against vaccines. Boulder is particularly susceptible for this, as the anti-vaccine movement is labeled more "natural" than pharmaceutical. But that denies the science: Vaccines are proven to have vastly improved the health and lives of millions of people in the modern world.

It's no small thing to risk those gains: It's not just the children whose parents have made this choice who risk diseases or worse. It's the frail, the elderly, the infants too young for vaccines and people with compromised immune systems who are put at risk. That's a public health problem that should have a public policy response.

As long as the religious and medical exemptions are maintained, requiring parents to justify keeping their children unvaccinated before sending them to licensed childcare facilities or public schools -- putting the "herd" at risk -- sounds in line with what other states with better vaccination rates already have.

-- Erika Stutzman, for

the Camera editorial board