Los Angeles Times

Despite improvements, California's campaign for childhood immunizations faces pushback

LOS ANGELES - Two years after California adopted one of the toughest child vaccination laws in the nation, the state's immunization rates are near record-high levels.

Approved after a measles outbreak that originated at Disneyland, the law makes California one of only three states that bar parents from citing their personal beliefs to avoid having their children vaccinated.

Yet, even with the strict new law, there remain schools and neighborhoods with dangerously low vaccination rates, experts say, largely because a growing number of parents are obtaining doctors' notes exempting their kids from the required shots.

At least 95 percent of the population needs to be vaccinated to prevent an outbreak of a highly contagious disease such as measles, experts say.

But at 105 schools in the state, 10 percent or more of kindergartners had a medical exemption in the


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