Vaccination Rates in Colorado Below National Average

Less than 89 percent of the state’s kindergarten-aged children have been vaccinated for illnesses such as measles, mumps, whooping cough and chickenpox. That’s far below the national median and the 95 percent threshold needed to prevent an outbreak.

The low rates of vaccination prompted Denver Public Health to issue a warning in January about measles exposure and in February state officials started to investigate multiple reports of mumps infections.

KGNU’s Carl Armon spoke with Dr. Jessica Cataldi, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Colorado and Assistant Professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.  Dr. Cataldi and Carl Armon were two of the co-authors of a recent report “Vaccine-Preventable Diseases in Colorado’s Children.”

Listen to an extended interview with Dr. Jessica Cataldi:

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