Members of the state Department of Health (DPH) and the South Carolina Immunization Coalition met in Cayce Thursday to talk about the factors that influence childhood vaccinations.
Brandon Traxler, acting director of DPH, encouraged families to talk with trusted doctors about which immunizations are right, and about when is the right time to administer them.
Health officials also touted the importance of access, mainly through DPH’s Mobile Health Unit program. The department says these traveling vaccination and health centers have improved vaccination numbers and general healthcare access in many of the state’s more remote and rural areas, for children and adults.
“Through our Mobile Unit program, we’ve been able to see firsthand the positive effect, of increasing access,” said Immunization Coalition Board Member Melanie Slan.
Because the units can get to patients and communities where they are, Slan said, state health officials have been able to protect more children from resurging diseases like measles -- which cropped up in a big way in South Carolina last year, after decades of being deemed eradicated -- and polio, which made its way to New York earlier this year.
The push to champion immunizations comes as new CDC numbers this week show a notable rise in children being exempted from vaccinations for religious reasons in the US; and as recent DPH data show a similar trend in several South Carolina counties.
Forty-five of 46 counties in South Carolina maintained or reached at least 90% of students having required immunizations by the end of the 2025-6 school year. The exception, Spartanburg County, where last year’s measles outbreak concentrated, fell just shy of 89%.
However, apart from the Upstate, every region of South Carolina showed an uptick in the rate of childhood immunizations through last school year.
The four regions -- also including Lowcountry, Midlands, and Pee Dee -- saw vaccination rates overall rise in the 2025-6 school year for the first time since records began in 2021. About 94% of children in the state overall closed last school year with required vaccinations. The Upstate finished the year at about 92%.