Anti-Vaccine Misinformation Fuels Minnesota’s Worst Measles Outbreak in Decades

A measles outbreak that swept through Minnesota’s Somali-American community between April and August of 2017 became the state’s worst in nearly three decades — and public health officials placed much of the blame on anti-vaccine activists who had specifically targeted the community with misinformation.

By the time the outbreak was contained, 79 cases had been confirmed. Sixty-five of the patients were children of Somali descent, and overall, 61 of the 79 cases — roughly 81 percent — were in people of Somali heritage. The median age of those infected was just two years old.

The numbers told a devastating story about the impact of vaccine refusal: 68 of the first 75 confirmed cases were unvaccinated. Of those 68, sixty-three were old enough to have received the MMR vaccine but had not.

Vaccination rates in the Somali-Minnesotan community had plummeted over the preceding decade. In 2004, the MMR vaccination rate among Somali children in Minnesota stood at 92 percent — well above the threshold needed for herd immunity. By 2014, that rate had fallen to just 35.6 percent in Hennepin County, home to the largest concentration of Somali residents.

The decline was driven by fears about autism. Around 2008, Somali parents in the Minneapolis area began noticing what appeared to be a disproportionate number of Somali preschoolers receiving special education services for autism spectrum disorders. Since there is no single word for autism in the Somali language, the condition was unfamiliar and frightening to many families.

Anti-vaccine groups seized on those fears. Andrew Wakefield, the discredited British researcher whose fraudulent 1998 paper claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism — a paper that was retracted and led to Wakefield losing his medical license — visited Minnesota and met directly with Somali families, reinforcing their concerns.

The subsequent measles outbreak exposed more than 8,000 people to the virus and cost the Minnesota Department of Health more than $900,000 to contain. More than 51,000 additional doses of the MMR vaccine were administered during the public health response.

Health officials worked closely with Somali community leaders, faith leaders, and medical professionals to counter the misinformation and rebuild trust in the vaccine. The effort was widely studied as a case example of how targeted disinformation campaigns can erode public health in vulnerable communities.