Katie Jennings took all six of her children to get the measles, mumps and rubella shot in April 2025 after seeing a headline about a second unvaccinated child dying of measles in Texas. She posted an emotional TikTok clip that has since been watched more than 422,000 times, and in it she asked: “What are we doing? Why are we doing this?”
For Jennings, the answer was simple. “I wanted to protect my kids,” she said. “You can change your mind.” Her decision is part of a wider shift that public health experts say is showing up in places where measles outbreaks have made the disease real again for families who once kept their distance from vaccines.
The numbers help explain why the mood is changing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 1,748 measles infections as of April 17, 2026, and public health experts say that figure is likely a gross undercount. Measles has been spreading in the US at infection levels not seen in decades, and the outbreak is threatening the country’s elimination status.
That pressure is starting to move immunisation rates. South Carolina health officials reported a nearly 170 per cent increase in MMR vaccinations at free clinics in January compared with the year prior, and the state is close to declaring its measles outbreak over. Texas saw MMR vaccines jump 15 per cent in 2025 before declaring its outbreak over in August 2025. Utah’s health department has also recorded a bump in immunisations since summer 2025.
The pattern matters because it shows that some vaccine-hesitant parents are not staying fixed in place once they see the disease in their own communities. That shift may be helping to slow outbreaks in several measles hot spots, even as national case counts keep rising.
The politics around the issue have also changed. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who seeded his Make America Healthy Again agenda with vaccine misinformation, has gone quiet on measles in recent weeks ahead of the midterm elections and has been instructed by the Trump administration to stick to talking points with wider appeal. For parents like Jennings, though, the policy fight mattered less than the picture on a phone screen and the fear it left behind.
