In the California border region, the rate of vaccination is consistently high. Many people cross the California border every day; therefore, maintaining high rates of vaccination is vital to provide better control of communicable diseases. Immunization is one of the best ways to prevent dangerous or even potentially lethal infectious diseases. Vaccines have prevented millions of deaths worldwide. California has experienced two major outbreaks of pertussis within the past nine years (2010 and 2014), which resulted in hospitalizations and infant deaths. In 2014, there was also a large measles outbreak in California associated with a theme park. Measles is also a highly preventable disease but continues to afflict many Americans today. These highly contagious yet preventable diseases are still prevalent in the U.S and continue to remain on the radar of health departments.  ​

A comparison by race/ethnicity indicated that in the border region, in San Diego County, the rate for Whites was 266 per 1,000,000 (818 cases); for Latinos, the rate was 218 per 1,000,000 (492 cases). In Imperial, the rate for Latinos was 10 per 1,000,000 (three cases), and there were no cases among Whites. In comparison with the border region, California statewide had a rate of 72 per 1,000,000 (2,180 cases) among Whites and 49 per 1,000,000 (1,519 cases) among Latinos (Fig. 8.2) (CDPH, 2019).  ​

In a comparison by gender, the rates were similar for males and females; in San Diego County, males had a rate of 231 and females had a rate of 235 per 1,000,000 (772 and 776 cases, respectively); in Imperial County, the rate was 11 for males and 11 for females per 1,000,000 (two cases and two cases, respectively). In California, the rate for males was 62, and that for females was 67 per 1,000,000 (2,427 and 2,658 respectively) (Fig. 8.3) (CDPH, 2019).  ​

Measles in the California Border Region

A comparison by race/ethnicity indicated that San Diego County had one Latino case with a rate of 0.4 per 1,000,000 population, whereas California had 28 White cases and three Latino cases with rates of 0.9 and 0.1 cases per 1,000,000 populations respectively (Fig. 8.5) (CDPH, 2019).  ​

In a comparison by gender, all cases in San Diego County were female (two cases), as compared with California, where there were 22 male cases and 17 female cases. The rate in San Diego County for females was 0.6 cases per 1,000,000 population. The rate of measles in California was 0.4 per 1,000,000 population among females and 0.6 per 1,000,000 population for males. (Fig. 8.6) (CDPH, 2019).  ​​