How Public Health Outreach Ended A 1990s Measles Outbreak And What's Different Now

This year's measles outbreak is the largest since the 1990s. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday that 75 more measles cases were confirmed last week in 23 states, bringing the U.S. total to 839 so far this year.

The outbreak from 1989 through 1991 was much larger than today's, with more than 27,000 cases in 1990 alone. But the conditions that lead to that outbreak and what it took to end it are dramatically different from the ones the U.S. is seeing today.

The bulk of cases today are concentrated in New York state. As of Monday, New York City alone reports 498 cases, with 34 people hospitalized, since the outbreak began last September.

In New York state, public health authorities attribute the outbreak to anti-vaccination sentiments among a small subgroup of religious Orthodox Jewish residents among whom the virus has spread. The outbreak in the early 1990s hit poor black and Latino communities the hardest, in Central Brooklyn, upper Manhattan and the South Bronx.

The outbreak in New York City took off in the spring of 1990. And once the public health response got underway, parents got on board.