Who Are California’s Anti-Vaxxers?

UC Berkeley | Data Visualization and Communication
Anna Jacobson and Allison Godfrey

---

Project Description

A data visualization project exploring anti-vaccination behaviors in California from 2000 to 2015. Includes a visual essay and a data dashboard.

Skills

Data Visualization, Written Communication, Web Design, Data Cleansing

Tools

Tableau, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, CodePen

---

Motivation

Vaccinations provide people the ability to develop immunity to particular diseases. When the majority of a population is vaccinated, “herd immunity” protects those who have not been vaccinated by blocking the spread of these diseases. However, the 21st century has seen worldwide concern over the safety of the Measles/ Mumps/Rubella (MMR) vaccine and other types of vaccines - despite the lack of scientific evidence to substantiate these fears.

This trend has been called vaccine hesitancy, anti-vaccination, or “anti-vax” for short. Anti-vax refers to a refusal or reluctance to have children vaccinated despite the overwhelming evidence that vaccines are safe and effective. This hesitancy may come from a misunderstanding of the ingredients in vaccines and how they work, mistrust of doctors and pharmaceutical companies, and/or belief in the unfounded associations of vaccines with other diseases and disorders such as autism.

Anti-vaccination was identified by the World Health Organization as one of top ten global health threats of 2019. In California, an alarming 15-year-long anti-vax trend led to Senate Bill 277, signed into law in 2015, which eliminated Personal Belief Exemptions for vaccinations of school-age children. California is currently one of only three states in the US with such a law.

In this project, we visualize anti-vaccination in California in the period from 2000 through the passage of Senate Bill 277 in 2015.

---

---

See the visual essay and the data dashboard.