Fewer people would recommend MMR vaccine: Survey

As measles cases continue to spread across the country, a new survey shows a “small but significant drop” in the proportion of the public that would recommend someone in their household get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. According to the poll, released Monday from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (AAPC) at the University of Pennsylvania, about 86 percent of people would recommend that someone in their household who was eligible for the MMR vaccine get the shot, down from 90 percent in November 2024. The declines are similar for other vaccines, which “should be cause for concern,” said Ken Winneg, APPC’s managing director of survey research. The results comeas measles cases are higher than in any year since the disease was declared eradicated. If the outbreaks continue spreading at their current pace — primarily in South Carolina and along the Utah-Arizona border— the U.S. is likely to lose its status as a country where the disease is eliminated. Infectious disease specialists say losing measles elimination status is directly related to President Trump’s appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the vaccine policies he’s pursued on behalf of the Trump administration. The latest survey found 75 percent of adults would recommend an eligible person be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus (HPV), down from 79 percent in November 2024. Another 85 percent said they would recommend the polio vaccine, down from 88 percent last year. A similar share of adults said the MMR vaccine is safe, a number that has remained the same in surveys conducted in 2024 and 2023. But that is significantly lower than how people perceived its safety in August 2022, when 88 percent considered the shot to be safe. In the current survey, 83 percent said that the MMR vaccine is effective, down from 87 percent in 2022. Three in four people also said they believe it is safer to get the MMR vaccine than to get the diseases it protects, the poll found. The AAPC survey of 1,637 U.S. adults was conducted from Nov. 17-Dec. 1. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.