Vaccines are a hot button issue in the U.S., particularly with the rise of the anti-vaxx movement in recent years, and a WalletHub report found that some states are vaccinating at much higher rates than others.
Vaccines teach the body how to recognize pathogens — harmful microorganisms like bacteria or viruses that can cause disease — as well as produce antibodies in a safe manner to fight those pathogens when they arise in the body.
Massachusetts is at the top of states with the highest rates of flu shots among children between six months to 17 years old, the highest share of teens aged 13 to 17 years old with an updated HPV shot and the meningitis shot, and the lowest share of a civilian non-institutionalized population without health insurance coverage.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the state of Mississippi, which has the lowest share of teens with an updated HPV shot and the meningitis shot, and the lowest share of adults with the tetanus shot and Shingles vaccine. (WalletHub leveraged data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Health Resources and Services Administration, and other sources.)
Dr. Jesse Hackell, a practicing pediatrician at New York’s Pomona Pediatrics (a division of Boston Children’s Health Physicians), noted how several of these states are in the South.
“The states that refuse the Medicaid expansion from the Affordable Care Act have different amounts of funding to pay for vaccines,” he told Yahoo Finance. “A lot of them are red states.”
By expanding Medicaid, those with household incomes up to 133% of poverty would be able to enroll and be able to access the program’s benefits. But, there are 14 states that have refused to expand Medicaid — these include Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and Oklahoma. This can affect both availability and access to vaccines.
“Importantly, a vaccine protects not only the individual to whom it is administered, but also the entire population,” according to a Harvard explainer on vaccinations from 2016. “When the number of immunized individuals within a population reaches a critical threshold, herd immunity ... protects the entire population, even those who are not vaccinated are protected from disease.”
‘Availability should not be an issue’
Other states that vaccinate the least include Texas, Florida, Arizona, New York, and New Jersey, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Kentucky.
Vaccine misinformation is part of the lack of vaccinations — there is an anti-vaxx movement that believes vaccines pose more harm than good. However, there are also policy issues at the root of these numbers.