Pennsylvania data tool allows parents to view school-level vaccination rates

Pennsylvania’s education and health departments on Monday launched a new data dashboard that, for the first time, allows parents to view vaccination rates at individual schools.

The dashboard publishes school-level immunization data from the 2025-2026 school year. Previously, vaccination information was only available at the county or state levels.

According to the tool’s initial data, more than half of reporting schools met or exceeded the 95% measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination threshold for kindergarten students. (Public health officials associate that level of vaccination with community immunity.) More than 200 schools reported 100% MMR vaccination rates among kindergarteners. More than 90% of Pennsylvania schools submitted vaccination data included in the dashboard.

State officials said the tool is designed to help parents better understand vaccination coverage in their children’s schools, while giving local leaders data to identify communities that may be vulnerable to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. The new platform stems from Gov. Josh Shapiro’s 2025 executive order directing agencies to protect access to vaccines and improve public access to reliable health information.

“Knowledge is power, Pennsylvania parents deserve clear, accessible data about the health of their children’s schools,” Dr. Debra Bogen, Pennsylvania’s health secretary, said in a press release.

State agencies have increasingly deployed interactive platforms to share information ranging from disease surveillance and environmental health data to maternal health outcomes and public benefit performance, giving residents and policymakers more timely access to trend data.

Nearly all states host interactive public health dashboards tracking vaccination metrics, such as California’s Health and Human Services open data portal, New York’s immunization dashboard, and Texas’s vaccine data reporting tools.

Pennsylvania aims to expand its vaccination dashboard this year with district-level search capabilities and additional enhancements when 2026-2027 school-year data becomes available. The commonwealth also plans to work with schools that have not yet submitted immunization data, to improve reporting rates while partnering with healthcare providers to expand access to routine childhood vaccinations.

“We want families to have all the facts to make personal health and educational decisions,” Secretary of Education Dr. Carrie Rowe said in the release. “At the same time, we want to work with school leaders to make the reporting process as smooth as possible.”