School District Immunization Data

The School District Immunization Fact Sheets and supplemental online dashboards provide local level data on childhood immunization coverage to help each Colorado school district understand its level of community protection and highlight successes and opportunities for improvement. Additionally, each fact sheet provides an overview of statewide Colorado vaccination and vaccine-preventable disease information, information on the importance of vaccination, and ways schools, public health and the community can partner to protect against vaccine-preventable disease.

Why Is School Immunization Important?

All students and school staff members deserve a healthy school environment that supports their well-being and builds a strong foundation for learning. It takes an entire community to protect against serious disease. Because diseases such as measles can spread rapidly, adequate vaccination coverage at the school level -- roughly 95% for each vaccine -- helps to protect the health of students, staff and others in the community, including those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons or because they are still too young to receive vaccines.

Especially as communities fight COVID-19, maintaining high vaccination coverage is critical to preventing additional outbreaks of disease that could further overwhelm our healthcare systems. And as with COVID-19, a case or outbreak of vaccine-preventable disease could force children to be excluded from school and miss out on valuable learning. Ensuring adequate vaccination coverage and compliance with school vaccination policy is also important to emergency response efforts and helps to prevent absenteeism and other societal and economic costs.

How Is My School District Doing?

To view your district’s immunization and exemption coverage data and to see how this data has changed over the years, visit the interactive dashboard below. (Note: This dashboard allows you to also view school district immunization data from the 2017-18, 2018-19, and 2019-20 school years.)

The Immunity Community Honor Roll

The purpose of the Immunity Community Honor Roll is to recognize K-12 schools and school districts that have achieved exceptional vaccination coverage. This honor roll can be viewed for the 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20 and 2020/21 school years as reported by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

For a school to achieve “gold status” and therefore be listed on the Immunity Community Honor Roll, it must report vaccination rates in line with Healthy People 2030 goals: at or above 95% for DTaP, HepB, MMR, Polio and Varicella and 80% for Tdap for schools that that have 6th grade or higher, when Tdap is required. For a school district to be listed on the honor roll, all schools in the district must achieve gold status. Only 18% of school districts in Colorado achieve gold status, and only 49% of Colorado students attend a school that achieves gold status.

See the full list of schools and school districts that have high vaccination coverage in the Immunity Community Honor Roll summary in the intereative dashboard, below.

Colorado School District Immunization Data Dashboard

For questions, please contact us.

2019-2020 School District Immunization Fact Sheets

These fact sheets provide context on the level of protection offered in schools and school districts across Colorado. 2020/21 fact sheets coming soon!

How to Use these Tools

We encourage school boards and administrators, principals, school health personnel, parents and other stakeholders to use this data to inform local discussions on immunization-related initiatives and compliance with school vaccination policy. View the Fact Sheet How-To Guide to learn how you can utilize these resources in your communities.

Additional Resources

Methods and References

The district-level immunization data featured on these fact sheets has been made possible through 2014 legislation and subsequent rulemaking which requires schools and licensed child care centers to annually report immunization and exemption data to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE). The fact sheets contain data only for schools that reported to CDPHE for the 2019-2020 school year. To access the 2020-2021 school and child care immunization data, visit the CDPHE website.

For questions on data, methods and references, please contact Kate Matlin.

Sources:

Healthy People 2020 Topics and Objectives: Immunization and Infectious Diseases
Vaccination Coverage for Selected Vaccines and Exemption Rates Among Children in Kindergarten — United States, 2017–18 School Year, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) / October 12, 2018 / 67(40);1115–1122
Vaccine-Preventable Diseases in Colorado’s Children Report, Children’s Hospital Colorado; February 2019

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