Arkansas Childhood Vaccination Rates Drop to Lowest Level in Decade

Vaccine coverage among Arkansas kindergarteners dropped in the 2024-25 school year to lower levels than the state has seen since the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years, new data show.

Data released Thursday, July 31, by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), show the following vaccination coverage rates among Arkansas kindergarten students for the 2024-25 school year:

• 5% for the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTaP) vaccine, down from 91.4% in 2023-24 and the lowest rate in nine years.
• 92% for the hepatitis B vaccine, down from 94.9% in 2023-24 and the lowest rate in 10 years.
• 6% for the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, down from 92.5% in 2023-24 and the lowest rate in 10 years.
• 8% for the polio vaccine, down from 91.4% in 2023-24 and the lowest rate in nine years.
• 2% for two doses of the varicella vaccine, down from 92% in 2023-24 and the lowest rate in 10 years.

Most states allow children to be exempted from vaccines for medical or non-medical reasons; the latter may be allowed for either religious or philosophical reasons — or, in the case of Arkansas and 13 other states, both. In the 2024-25 school year, Arkansas reached a record high for exemptions, with 3.5% of kindergarteners having non-medical vaccine exemptions and 0.1% having medical exemptions. This was a slight increase from the 2023-24 school year, when 3.4% of Arkansas kindergarten students had non-medical vaccine exemptions and 0.1% had medical exemptions.

Arkansas’s rate of exemptions has risen every year since the 2015-16 school year, when 1.2% of kindergarten students had non-medical exemptions and 0.1% had medical exemptions. In 2016 and 2017, Arkansas experienced a mumps outbreak with nearly 3,000 cases. During the outbreak, the Arkansas Department of Health required students who were not fully vaccinated because of exemptions to be excluded from school for 26 days if they were exposed to the virus.

The new CDC data, drawn from information submitted by the states, show that vaccine coverage rates for kindergarteners nationwide decreased for all reported vaccines except hepatitis B, which saw a slight increase. Coverage rates among U.S. kindergarten students for the 2024-25 school year were:

• 1% for the DTaP vaccine, down from 92.3% in 2023-24.
• 94% for the hepatitis B vaccine, up from 93.9% in 2023-24.
• 5% for the MMR vaccine, down from 92.7% in 2023-24.
• 5% for the polio vaccine, down from 92.7% in 2023-24.
• 1% for two doses of the varicella vaccine, down from 92.3% in 2023-24.

Like Arkansas, the U.S. reached an all-time high for childhood vaccine exemptions in 2024-25, with 3.4% of kindergarten students having non-medical vaccine exemptions and 0.2% having medical exemptions for the 2024-25 school year. In the previous school year, 3.1% of U.S. kindergarten students had non-medical exemptions and 0.2% had medical exemptions.

Other findings for the 2024-25 school year include:

• Exemptions increased in 36 states and the District of Columbia, with 17 states reporting exemptions exceeding 5%.
• The number of U.S. kindergarten students exempt from one or more vaccines was about 138,000.
• Coverage with the MMR, DTaP, polio, and varicella vaccines decreased in more than half states.
• The number of U.S. kindergarten students attending school without documentation of completing the MMR vaccine series was about 286,000.

The above-named vaccines are recommended for children early in life to build immunity and protect them prior to contact with life-threatening diseases, which they can be more susceptible to at a young age. When a large enough percentage of a population is vaccinated against a disease, those who are not vaccinated can still be protected by community immunity, also referred to as herd immunity. Herd immunity exists when enough people are immune to an infectious disease to limit the disease’s ability to spread.

According to the World Health Organization, the percentage of people who need to be vaccinated or immune to a disease to achieve herd immunity varies, ranging from about 80% for polio to more than 95% in order to prevent an outbreak of a highly contagious virus like measles in a community.