A Parent-To-Parent Campaign To Get Vaccine Rates Up

33-year-old mother Kim Nelson started a vaccine advocacy group in Greenville, S.C. to help reach vaccine-hesitant families. Here, she prepares vaccine information flyers for public school students.

Alex Olgin / WFAE

Updated at 5:31 p.m. ET

In 2017, Kim Nelson had just moved her family back to her hometown in South Carolina. Boxes were still scattered around the apartment, and while her two young daughters played, Nelson scrolled through a newspaper article on her phone. It said religious exemptions for vaccines had jumped nearly 70 percent in recent years in the Greenville area — the part of the state she had just moved to.

She remembers yelling to her husband in the other room, “David, you have to get in here! I can’t believe this.”