Mandatory Immunizations for Children in California

MANDATORY IMMUNIZATIONS FOR CHILDREN IN CALIFORNIA: A POLICY ANALYSIS

This study examine the policy issue of mandatory immunization for all children in the State of California. The study found that the existing law mandating that children be immunized before being allowed to enter public school is too weakened by permitted exemptions from the law to serve as an effective instrument to achieve maximum child immunization in the state. The study found further that maximum child immunization is necessary for the state to be able to adequately protect public health in the state. The study found that it is necessary, therefore, for the state to strengthen the child immunization policy if the objective of maximum child immunization is to be attained. The policy recommendation was that the State of California should exercise its police power and make the immunization of all children mandatory with the single exception of an exemption for medical necessity for the health of the child, an exemption that would be determined only by competent physicians designated by the state to make such a determination.

This study examines the issue of mandatory immunization for children in the State of California. The findings of this examination are presented in the form of a policy analysis within the contexts of the (1) social problem and its context, (2) current policies, practices, and outcomes, (3) and policy recommendation.

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ine-preventable diseases have been virtually eliminated from the United States. The implication of this argument is that no need for any child in the United States to be vaccinated because all diseases that could be prevented by vaccination have been eliminated from American society. The response to this line of argument by the CDC is that: It's true that vaccination has enabled us to reduce most vaccine-preventable diseases to very low levels in the United States. However, some of them are still quite prevalent�even epidemic�in other parts of the world. Travelers can unknowingly bring these diseases into the United States, and if we were not protected by vaccinations these diseases could quickly spread throughout the population, causing epidemics here. At the same time, the relatively few cases we currently have in the U.S. could very quickly become tens or hundreds of thousands of cases without the protection we get from vaccines. We should still be vaccinated, then, for two reasons. The first is to protect ourselves. Even if we think our chances of getting any of these diseases are small, the diseases still exist and can still infect anyone who is not protected. A few years ago in California a child who had just entere

Category: Medical - M