The Lubbock Health Department in Texas offers MMR vaccines in vans behind its building as well as in a nearby storefront. Photo taken March 18, 2025. (Photo by Isaias Soto/Cronkite News)
PHOENIX – Health professionals say mixed messaging from top officials along with widespread misinformation is contributing to declining vaccination rates, particularly in rural counties where health care access is already limited.
“For a person who’s not trained in medicine, science, or public health, it’s a confusing mix of messages they receive, and they don’t have any good way to sort it out,” said Dr. Doug Campos-Outcalt, a physician and public health expert at the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine.
Adding to the mix of confusing messages are Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine statements, which have alarmed public health experts.
“Before, anti-vaccinations were sort of the minority group within society. … This is government leaders expressing significant doubts and concerns about the safety and efficiency of vaccines,” said James Hodge, professor of law at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention canceled $11.4 billion in COVID-related funds for state and local departments, affecting vaccine services and over a dozen clinics in Pima County.
The county was working with community-based organizations and libraries to distribute COVID tests and provide outreach events before the cancellation.
According to Pima County Public Health Director Theresa Cullen, the county received two grants in 2021 that were supposed to last through the summer of 2026, the National Initiative to Address COVID-19 Health Disparities and COV4Equity, which addressed vaccine equity.
“If you pull federal funds for vaccines, parents can’t afford these things. Millions of children each year in the United States get vaccinated for preventable conditions solely because the vaccines are free, largely because the federal government has the resources to provide that,” Hodge said.
The county used the grant funds for more than just vaccination efforts.
“We were doing lots of different stuff with this grant, all of which had been approved by the CDC, obviously a tie to COVID, but far beyond,” Cullen said.
The health disparities grant funding helped identify groups that could be at higher risk of complications from COVID-19, such as those with chronic disease or 65 and older, by providing health education and increasing insurance enrollment. The closure of the vaccine equity grant will impact vaccine clinics, education and outreach, especially for those in rural communities.
Gila, Navajo, Mohave, and Yavapai counties in Arizona have lower vaccination rates than Gaines County in Texas, which has been experiencing a measles outbreak. Maricopa and Pima counties maintained a 90% rate for MMR vaccinations, in the 2022-2023 school year.
Nationally, the CDC confirmed 884 measles cases as of April 24.
Vaccination rates have declined significantly, especially among young children. Last school year, approximately 280,000 schoolchildren nationally were not vaccinated against measles, according to Kaiser.
The CDC collected data from state and local immunization programs and found that less than 93% of kindergarteners have been vaccinated with all state-required vaccines in the 2023-2024 school year. This was down from 95% in the 2019-2020 pre-pandemic school year and below coverage levels from the past decade.
A CDC report shows that 8.5% of Arizona’s kindergartners skipped required vaccinations through exemptions last school year. In Arizona, parents need to submit a “personal beliefs” form to their child’s school to opt out of vaccination. The data included homeschooled children to a limited extent.
“We already have one of the easiest exemption processes for school kids, but it doesn’t seem like that’s enough anymore,” said Ashley Chambers, executive director of Arizona Families for Vaccines, a nonprofit that works with legislators and an array of other groups to boost confidence in vaccines. “When we look at the national trend, we like to say that ‘the anti-vaccine movement doesn’t take their toys and go home.’ What I mean by that is they get what they want, and then next year they go further.”
The organization focuses on educating Arizona lawmakers rather than the general public. Brandi Giles is a registered nurse who spearheads immunization education efforts at the nonprofit.
“I definitely saw more deaths than one human would normally see. I saw mothers and sons pass away, husbands and wives pass away, young mothers who never got to hold their babies,” Giles said, recalling her experience as an ICU nurse during COVID and witnessing the severe consequences of vaccine hesitancy.
“It’s scary to think that we could potentially have that again, with diseases that could be prevented because of vaccines. We’re putting ourselves in a situation where we’re going to overrun our hospitals again. We’re going to overwork our already overworked health care workers. Our infrastructure can’t handle it again,” Giles said.
