The health and economic repercussions of declining MMR coverage in the United States
< 0.001). We modeled a scenario in which coverage among children aged 0 to 6 y declined by 1% per year, reaching a 5% absolute reduction by year 5 relative to baseline. Under this scenario, we projected a nonlinear surge in cases, hospitalizations, and annual expenditures arising from outbreak response, direct medical costs, and productivity losses. This scenario produced 17,232 (50% HDI: 9,177 to 26,428), 4,085 (50% HDI: 2,184 to 6,210) hospitalizations, 36 (50% HDI: 19 to 54) deaths, and $1.50 (50% HDI: $0.90 to $2.85) billion in annual costs in 2030, with a cumulative cost of $7.77 billion (50% HDI: $5.56 to $11.58 billion) over 5 y. These findings demonstrate that even marginal reductions in MMR vaccine uptake can result in disproportionately large health and economic burdens.
Authors
- Gergely Röst (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9476-3284)
- Lamia Ayaz
- Burton H. Singer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5295-5971)
- Abhishek Pandey (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4578-7487)
- Meagan C. Fitzpatrick (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5248-2668)
- Seyed M. Moghadas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4414-0227)
- Alison P. Galvani (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2059-6716)
- C WELLS
- Rebecca Giglio
- Velda Wang
- Chelsea Cipriano
- Charlene Wong
- Yang Ye
- Carolyn Bawden
Institutions
- University of Maryland, Baltimore (US)
- York University (CA)
- University of Szeged (HU)
- Yale University (US)
- Asian Health Coalition (US)
- Respiratory and Meningeal Pathogens Research Unit (ZA)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2026-04-14
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2605971123
- Primary Topic
- Virology and Viral Diseases
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- National Research, Development and Innovation Office