As childhood vaccination rates plummet across the Suncoast and measles cases resurge nationwide, Sarasota County faces a critical threat to public health. Roughly 82% of kindergarteners in the public school system were fully immunized against the disease this year — well below herd immunity.
That’s roughly the same rate as in Gaines County, Texas, the epicenter of a measles outbreak that killed two children and infected hundreds this year. And across all vaccine types for both public and private schools, Sarasota County’s kindergarten immunization rates have dropped to their lowest point in decades.
Yet the medical professionals best suited to sound the alarm are largely silent. Doctors and public health leaders are unwilling to speak publicly, fearful of political retribution, online harassment and pressure from state officials and activists who have cast doubt on established science.
Among more than 20 pediatricians contacted by Suncoast Searchlight, only one agreed to speak on the record about the risks of measles and the importance of childhood vaccination. Others declined, citing a range of concerns — from professional risk to threats from anti-vaccine activists — that have made even routine public health messaging feel dangerous.
The silence extends beyond individual doctors. Sarasota Memorial’s physician group declined to state outright that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is safe and effective. The Sarasota County Health Department also declined to grant an interview and, in a written response, did not offer any direct endorsement of childhood vaccination — even as measles cases rise nationwide.
More than 1,350 measles cases have been confirmed across 40 states, including Florida, this year. That’s a nearly five-fold increase from the 285 measles cases confirmed last year by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which says 95% of the population must receive two doses of the MMR vaccine to prevent outbreaks of the disease..
Overall vaccination rates are even lower.
A decade ago, about 92% of kindergarten students in Sarasota County public and private schools were fully immunized across all required vaccines. In 2025, the rate dropped just below 80%, according to the Florida Department of Health.
Statewide, kindergarten vaccination rates have also declined in recent years, but most counties remain ahead of Sarasota. About three-quarters reported higher immunization levels last school year — including nearby DeSoto at 91% and Manatee at 90%. The statewide rate was 89%.
“Vaccines help protect children from deadly and debilitating diseases. Unfortunately, after the COVID pandemic, the mistrust in science and immunizations has increased,” said Dr. Lisa Gonzalez-Abello, pediatrician and chief medical officer for CenterPlace Health. “It’s very disheartening.”
Gonzalez-Abello was the only local pediatrician who agreed to speak on the record.
Even the region’s largest health care provider declined to offer a full-throated endorsement of vaccines. In response to questions from Suncoast Searchlight about the risks of falling MMR vaccination rates, Sarasota Memorial’s physician group provided a statement framing it as a personal decision — not a public health imperative.
“Vaccination decisions are very personal, and made between parents, patients and their physicians,” Jack Rodman, chief medical officer for First Physicians Group of the Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, said in a statement.
“SMH First Physicians Group pediatricians work closely with families,” the statement continued, “especially during back-to-school physicals time, to discuss the risks and benefits of vaccination, and provide trusted guidance based on the most current medical recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control and Florida Department of Health.”
In response to a subsequent email asking if Rodman — or First Physicians Group — would affirm that the MMR vaccine is safe and effective, Rodman offered a follow-up statement: “Decisions about vaccines should be made by parents and health care providers based on each child's unique needs and health history.”
Epidemiologists, public health experts and national medical groups — including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association — agree that the science supporting vaccines as a life-saving tool against communicable disease remains unchanged.
Vaccines are “one of the greatest things that's happened in public health” alongside clean drinking water, said Karen Liller, the chair of the Department of Community Health Services at the .University of South Florida.
But viral misinformation and disinformation have fueled vaccine hesitancy.
While the anti-vaccine movement predates the pandemic — stoked in part by debunked claims linking vaccines to autism — COVID-19 accelerated its reach. The crisis, combined with the rise of content creators and activists who built followings by rejecting medical consensus, propelled vaccine skepticism into the mainstream.
In the wake of lockdowns and other public health mandates, local residents who distrusted health authorities and questioned standard COVID-19 treatments began protesting Sarasota County Public Hospital Board meetings. In 2022, a slate of self-proclaimed “Health Freedom” candidates, including a doctor who prescribed scientifically unsupported treatments for COVID-19, earned three seats on the nine-member board.
Those skeptics have found champions in high-ranking health officials, including Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Both have elevated false claims about vaccine safety, earning condemnation from scientists and physicians.
Movement vigilantes, meanwhile, have gone further.
After Sarasota Memorial Hospital released a report in 2023 showing its COVID-19 patients fared better than in most other Florida hospitals, doctors and staff reported receiving a wave of death threats.
“An individual, of course, is going to be made a target,” said Jill Roberts, a professor at USF’s College of Public Health whose areas of focus include epidemiology and emerging diseases. “There’s possible retribution, loss of jobs – and those things are scary.”
Religious exemptions rise, fueling Sarasota’s vaccination decline
The state allows exemptions from childhood vaccinations for medical reasons, such as an immunocompromised patient undergoing chemotherapy, or for religious reasons. For the latter, a parent must assert that vaccines conflict with their faith.
At Sarasota County Schools, a small share of kindergarteners had temporary medical exemptions last year, according to district data.
However, an estimated 10% to 15% of school-age children countywide have religious exemptions from vaccines, according to a report published in May by the Florida Department of Health. That’s among the highest rates of any county in Florida. Statewide, about 6% of children have religious exemptions and that number is rising every month, the report said.
In a written statement, Sarasota County Schools said its health services team has advised all schools to remain vigilant for signs and symptoms of communicable diseases, and to follow established disease protocols. Suspected cases are reported to the local Department of Health office, as required by law.
The district also said it enforces compliance with state vaccination statutes — students must either be vaccinated or have an exemption on file — and it provides information about health resources to families but noted that “it is a parent’s/guardian’s choice to vaccinate their child(ren) or pursue an exemption.”
At CenterPlace Health, Gonzalez-Abello said her staff hears a variety of reasons for parents’ reluctance to vaccinate their children.
Beyond concerns about potential health risks, Gonzalez-Abello said, some of her patients’ parents believe their families are less vulnerable because they homeschool or don’t travel outside the area.
“But it's just such a small world, and people are traveling here constantly from all over,” she said. “At the beginning of the disease, you may have it without having symptoms, and you are contagious. So, what people are thinking is a protection or a low risk is not really a low risk.”
Gonzalez-Abello also sometimes hears a myth that doctors profit from vaccines. “We don't,” she said. “We are just trying to keep (patients) safe and disease-free as much as possible.”
Hesitant parents often have consumed misinformation from nonscientific websites, social media or parent groups. Gonzalez-Abello encourages them to review evidence-based information from the American Academy of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the CDC.
She said doctors have to approach these conversations diplomatically and nonjudgementally or they risk provoking defensiveness. That takes time that is often a limited resource in contemporary health care.
When a parent begins to trust her and the science behind immunization, though, that’s a victory. “It feels like such a win when you're able to show them the information and get them to go ahead and start the vaccines or complete the series,” she said.
Gonzalez-Abello learned the power of immunizations long before becoming a doctor. “When I was growing up, I knew somebody who hadn't gotten the polio vaccine and had polio and was in a wheelchair for the rest of her life,” she recalled.
That awareness stuck with her. All four of her kids received every CDC-recommended childhood vaccine, plus additional ones when traveling for missions trips. But some younger parents view diseases like polio and measles as relics of history, she said.
“I feel like younger parents maybe think, ‘Oh, that's just before the times or we've changed. Now we don't have those [diseases] anymore.’”
But measles, which was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, is again part of the present. Of the cases confirmed this year, 92% occurred among unvaccinated people or people with unknown immunization status.
Scholars focusing on misinformation recommend a multipronged approach to counter anti-vaccine claims, from getting social media companies on board to relying on trusted sources of information to promote good science. The challenge has intensified as social media algorithms increasingly reward sensational content, and figures who reject established science, like Ladapo and Kennedy, enter into the highest levels of power.
Roberts, the USF professor, said that having a “consensus on messaging” has historically helped to shut down health-related misinformation.
But when politicians realized they “could swing certain voter groups by jumping on the anti-vax bandwagon,” Roberts said, “you had all this messaging that was counter to what the actual evidence shows, and that’s nearly impossible to counter.
“Unfortunately, we’re getting to the point where it’s going to take some tragic things to occur before the public opinion sways.”
This story was produced by Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom of the Community News Collaborative serving Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto counties. Learn more at suncoastsearchlight.org.
