Hoping to improve Utah's "abysmal" ranking of 44th in the nation for childhood vaccination rates, local officials have launched a new Salt Lake County immunization initiative.

The campaign, a collaboration between the Salt Lake Valley Health Department, Mayor Peter Corroon and Intermountain Healthcare, aims to provide free vaccines for 11,000 uninsured children and infants in 2007. The goal is to eventually bring the county's "vaccination adequacy" rate from the current level of 74 percent up to 90 percent. The current national rate is 81 percent.

Utah's "exemption rate" — the percent of parents who opt out of vaccinations for their children — is one of the highest in the nation, said SLVHD family health services director Audrey Stevenson. Utah is one of only a handful of states that allow exemptions not just for religious and medical reasons but for "philosophical" reasons.

Armed with a children's book titled "The Germ Patrol," Stevenson said she hopes that through education the health department will be able to "demystify the whole process of vaccinations" and allay fears.

Reasons for Utah's low rate of vaccination adequacy include the complexity of the vaccination schedule, the cost of immunizations, large family size and the decrease in well-child examinations, as well as fears that multiple vaccinations in a short period of time can lead to autism and other health problems.

"There are numerous studies to ensure that we're not putting harmful vaccinations out there," Stevenson said.

Salt Lake County and IHC will provide 100,000 vaccines to 11,000 uninsured children, "to protect our most vulnerable citizens," Corroon said.

The current recommendation is 18 vaccinations in the first two years of a child's life. Those immunizations include Hepatitis A and B, DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis), Hib (haemophilus influenza type b), pneumococcal, polio, MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), chickenpox and influenza.

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