• Posted June 26, 2025

School Vaccination Requirements Widely Supported By Americans, Poll Says

There’s widespread support among Americans for requiring that kids be vaccinated before they can go to school, a new Harvard survey has found.

About 4 in 5 U.S. adults (79%) say parents should be required to have their kids vaccinated against preventable diseases like measles, mumps and rubella to attend school, according to poll results from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Required school vaccination also has heavy bipartisan support, including 90% of Democrats, 68% of Republicans, and 66% of people who support the Make America Great Again movement, results show.

Further, nearly 3 in 4 parents (72%) support school vaccination requirements.

“Childhood vaccine requirements are less controversial than many people may think,” Brian Castrucci, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, said in a news release.

“This poll shows that they’re widely supported across political groups—and it’s heartening to see that so many Americans understand the importance of vaccination, which remains a fundamental pillar of public health and disease prevention,” added Castrucci. The de Beaumont Foundation, a public health think tank, co-sponsored the poll.

These poll results come as the U.S. faces a multi-state measles outbreak. 

There have been 23 measles outbreaks in 2025, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of Tuesday, a total 1,227 confirmed measles cases have been reported in 36 states and New York City.

Nine in 10 people (91%) consider childhood vaccines safe for most children, including 63% who say they are very safe and 28% who say they are somewhat safe, survey results show.

Most who support routine school vaccination requirements cited a number of reasons, including:

• Vaccine effectiveness (90%).

• Family responsibilities to keep schools safe (87%).

• The risk that diseases like measles will come back (84%).

• Protecting kids who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons (81%).

• The proven safety of vaccines because they are well-tested (80%) and have been around so long (76%).

Only about half (49%) said their support for vaccine requirements comes from trust in government agencies that approve vaccines.

Parental choice is most common reason given among the 21% of adults who oppose vaccine requirements. Nearly 4 in 5 (79%) of them say it should be a parent’s decision whether to vaccinate their child.

Opponents also say they think government agencies that enforce vaccine requirements are too influenced by politics and big companies (66%); worry that children might be required to get too many vaccines (64%); or think vaccine requirements exist to make money for pharma companies (54%).

Concern about vaccine safety was cited by only 40% of those who oppose vaccine requirements, results show.

“At this point, public opposition to childhood vaccine policies is often more about parental rights than vaccine safety,” survey lead Gillian SteelFisher, director of the Harvard Opinion Research Program, said in a news release.

“As the country leans on vaccine policies to help address its largest measles outbreak in decades, public health leaders need to be prepared to bring empathy to conversations that go beyond just trying to convince people vaccines are safe,” SteelFisher said.

The nationwide poll was conducted by phone and internet March 10-31 with a representative sample of 3,343 U.S. adults. The margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points for the entire sample.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on measles outbreaks.

SOURCE: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, news release, June 25, 2025