This story is adapted from the MT Lowdown, a weekly newsletter digest containing original reporting and analysis published every Friday.
A reader recently highlighted that national CDC reports on kindergarten vaccination rates have omitted Montana for the past three years. This sparked our investigation into the matter.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Montana is the only state not providing data on required childhood immunizations and exemptions to federal health officials. Such data informs the public on vaccination rates for diseases like measles and mumps and tracks trends such as a 3% decline in MMR vaccination since 2019.
Montana halted data sharing in 2021 due to a law expanding vaccine exemption access, passed as House Bill 334. Although schools still collect immunization information, the Montana Department of Public Health no longer gathers it from schools. Consequently, the last complete data year was 2018-19 after pandemic disruptions halted the 2019-20 report.
In 2023, Rep. Ed Stafman proposed reinstating data reporting, stating the exemption in HB 334 was unintended. “We have a public health emergency… without that data,” he argued. However, the proposal did not progress, leaving Montana absent from national data.
Public health experts stress the importance of K-12 vaccination data for assessing community vulnerability. Sophia Newcomer from the University of Montana’s Center for Population Health Research indicated that without such data, Montana is “flying blind” against potential outbreaks. Parents, especially with medically vulnerable children, need to know peer vaccination rates to protect their families.
As measles outbreaks rise in neighboring states, Newcomer warns of the need to understand each community’s protection level. Stafman plans to reintroduce his effort to restore vaccination data reporting in the upcoming 2025 legislative session.
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