As students across Georgia and Alabama return to classrooms this August, a sharp divide in childhood vaccination rates is drawing scrutiny from public health experts and parents alike. While Alabama maintains some of the highest immunization rates in the country, Georgia’s rates have slipped to new lows, raising concerns about the potential for outbreaks of diseases once thought to be largely under control.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), just 86.8% of Georgia’s kindergartners were fully up-to-date on their required vaccines as they entered school in 2024. That’s a notable drop from the 94% reported a decade ago and places Georgia at the bottom among Southern states for coverage with the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. In stark contrast, Alabama’s MMR vaccination rate for kindergartners sits at 95.2%, with some local counties like Morgan and Limestone reporting rates as high as 96% and 95%, respectively, according to CDC data released last week.
“What these numbers mean is that we have a growing vulnerability to disease outbreaks,” warned Jodie Guest, a professor of epidemiology at Emory University, in an interview with Healthbeat. The concern is not merely hypothetical: Georgia has already reported six measles cases in 2025, all in unvaccinated individuals from just two families. These cases, though contained, serve as a stark reminder of the risks that come with declining vaccine coverage.
The national context only heightens these worries. The CDC has reported 1,356 measles cases across the United States so far this year, the highest number since the early 1990s. Of these, a staggering 92% occurred in people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown. Alabama stands out as one of just ten states without a single reported case in 2025—a testament, experts say, to its robust immunization efforts.
Still, the story in Georgia is more complicated than a simple matter of parental choice. The state’s exemption rate—meaning students allowed to skip vaccines for religious or medical reasons—rose to 4.8% in 2024, second only to Florida among Southern states. Of Georgia’s approximately 5,535 kindergartners with exemptions last year, nearly all were for religious reasons, with medical exemptions accounting for just 0.1%. Under state law, parents can claim a religious exemption by filing an affidavit asserting that vaccination is contrary to their beliefs.
Yet, as Scott Thorpe, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Public Health Leadership, pointed out, ideology isn’t the only factor at play. “A lot of what’s driving that is kids struggling with access to health care, and their families struggling with access to health care,” he told Healthbeat. For families facing housing insecurity or lacking reliable transportation, getting children to a doctor’s office isn’t always feasible. Many clinics have limited hours, and not all pediatricians participate in the federal Vaccines for Children program, which provides free immunizations to those without insurance.
Chattahoochee County, a rural area near Columbus, Georgia, exemplifies the access problem. The latest state data shows its MMR vaccination rate for children aged 19 to 35 months at just 66.1%—the lowest in the state. Thorpe noted that the county has only one provider enrolled in the Vaccines for Children program, and 23 other Georgia counties face similar shortages. “The counties with some of the lower vaccination rates also have access issues,” he said. “It’s not the only issue – but it’s certainly one.”
Experts also point to the proliferation of misinformation as a key driver of declining vaccination rates and rising exemptions. “We are still in our state not doing a great job of addressing the inaccurate information that is out there about vaccines,” Guest said. She cited the influence of prominent figures who have publicly questioned vaccine safety and efficacy, contributing to what she called “swirling inaccurate information.” The result, she argued, is a growing number of parents who are either hesitant or outright opposed to vaccinating their children.
Melissa Haberlen DeWolf, research and policy director at Voices for Georgia’s Children, added another layer to the debate: the fading public memory of the dangers posed by diseases like polio and measles. “People tend to forget that the reason we haven’t seen many of these illnesses is because of widespread vaccination,” she said. “Diseases like polio have been eradicated in the U.S. thanks to decades of successful vaccination efforts, and we cannot take that progress for granted.”
In Alabama, where vaccination rates remain high, public health officials are not resting on their laurels. Dr. Wes Stubblefield, a district medical officer with the Alabama Department of Public Health, emphasized that herd immunity—achieved when 95% or more of a population is vaccinated—protects not just those who receive shots but also people with compromised immune systems who cannot be vaccinated. “The MMR vaccine is very effective at preventing measles infection, so we do know that based on the numbers historically and the numbers during the most recent outbreaks,” Stubblefield told The Decatur Daily.
Still, even in Alabama, the number of non-medical exemptions has nearly doubled over the past five years, rising from 650 in the 2019–20 school year to 1,169 in 2024–25. Doctors there report that some parents remain uneasy about vaccinations, despite the state’s strong track record. Stubblefield advises anyone with questions to reach out to their health care provider: “Regardless of whether they’re children or adults, anyone with questions or concerns should talk to their health care provider and should have a conversation with them so they can make the best decision for themselves and their family.”
One challenge in Georgia is the lack of detailed, up-to-date public data on vaccination rates at the local level. While neighboring states like Tennessee and North Carolina provide school-level data, Georgia’s Department of Public Health has only published county-level reports for children aged 19 to 35 months, and those reports haven’t been updated since the third quarter of 2023. According to Nancy Nydam Shirek, a spokesperson for the department, the state is currently improving its data collection and cleaning processes, including adding geocoding and refining how insurance coverage is calculated. “They are finalizing their review of the reports and will prioritize publishing them online once they receive final review and approval from leadership,” she said.
As of June 30, 2025, 87.2% of Georgia children aged 19 to 35 months had received the MMR vaccine, according to a report provided to Healthbeat. But for public health experts like Alison Buttenheim of the University of Pennsylvania, more granular data is critical. “Vaccination behavior and vaccine exemption behavior is a very socially and spatially clustered behavior,” she said in a recent media briefing. “We tend to see it in clumps.”
The stakes are high. As communities in Georgia and across the U.S. grapple with falling vaccination rates, the risk of outbreaks grows—not just for measles, but for other preventable diseases as well. For now, Alabama’s experience offers a hopeful example of what strong public health infrastructure and community trust can achieve. But as experts warn, vigilance and continued outreach are essential to keep children—and entire communities—safe from diseases that were once nearly forgotten.
