Recently released data from the Ohio Department of Health shows that child immunization rates are dropping and the percentage of kindergarteners attending school with non-medical vaccine exemptions is rising.
Ohio law currently requires students to be vaccinated against 10 preventable diseases. Families can get a medical exemption with a written excuse from a licensed physician. Non-medical exemptions are a lot looser and only require a student's family to submit a written excuse for reasons of conscience or religious convictions.
During the 2025-2026 school year, nearly 5.5% of kindergarten students in Ohio had non-medical vaccine exemptions, higher than the national median of 4%.
That percentage in Ohio has more than doubled since before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the 2019-2020 academic year, just 2.6% of Ohio kindergartners had non-medical exemptions. Meanwhile, the percentage of medical vaccine exemptions for students is unchanged at 0.2%.
Non-medical exemptions are also rising in Hamilton County. Last school year, 3.5% of kindergartners in the county had non-medical exemptions, increasing from 2.4% the prior year. In the 2019-2020 school year, those exemptions were at just 1.5%.
Hamilton County Public Health Medical Director Steve Feagins says this could put more children at risk of illness. He tells WVXU the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine is safe and provides effective protection against highly transmissible diseases.
"You could walk into a room two hours after someone with measles had left and be unvaccinated and get measles. It's incredibly contagious and incredibly vaccine-preventable," Feagins said. "Two doses provide lifelong immunity."
Although Hamilton County's vaccination rate for kindergartners is higher than other parts of the state, the data is incomplete. More than 25% of vaccine documentation from schools in the county last year is missing. That percentage is higher than in other counties across the state, but it isn't uncommon for Hamilton County or other Ohio counties with large metro areas.
Feagins says schools in large urban districts like Cincinnati Public Schools tend to focus on encouraging student attendance rather than tracking down medical records from parents. He believes many of these schools do have high vaccination rates, but without the data, he can't say for sure.
"We have every reason to believe that these are fully, if not partially, vaccinated kids, but we don't know that," he said.
A recent executive order signed by President Donald Trump earlier this month calls for reducing the number of childhood vaccines required by the federal government. Additionally, the order seeks to spread out the combined MMR vaccine by breaking it up into several individual shots, changing the vaccine from two doses to six.
Feagins notes that Trump's order has not changed any state or local vaccine requirements, adding that a six-shot MRR vaccine would be less practical. It also doesn't exist.
"There is no impact because there is no separate vaccine. It would take years, if not decades, to retool and do that," he said. "The vaccine is combined for basically the convenience of taking two shots rather than six."
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