Department of Health

Immunization Program

New York State’s Public Health Law requires children to be immunized against certain communicable diseases before they attend any public school, private school, nursery school, or day care facility. The Department of Health is responsible for promoting and monitoring compliance with these immunization requirements. We examined the effectiveness of the Department’s efforts and found that some improvements were needed. For example, we reviewed selected immunization records at a sample of 25 elementary and secondary schools and found that the immunization requirements in the Public Health Law were not always being met. We recommended the Department take certain actions to improve the accuracy and completeness of the information provided by schools about their compliance with immunization requirements. We also recommended certain improvements be made in Department activities for promoting compliance with the requirements.

For a complete copy of Report 2005-S-41 click here.
For a copy of the 90-day response click here.
For a copy of the associated follow-up report click here.