Buzz
With cities and businesses increasingly considering requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination before allowing activities like watching a movie or dining indoors, you’ve likely wondered what you’d do if you misplaced your vaccination card. But what about the records for all the other vaccines, including those you might not even remember receiving? Before the COVID-19 vaccine, we were immunized against diseases such as measles, mumps, polio, hepatitis, and the full array of other childhood vaccines.
You may need to verify your vaccination status for these other diseases in various scenarios, such as university enrollment or international travel. Just like with the COVID-19 vaccine, there isn’t a centralized database or entity keeping track of this information, so if you lose your records, you’ll have to track them down yourself.
Given the years—or even decades—that may have passed since receiving these shots, retrieving your complete record can be tricky, especially if you’ve moved frequently or lost contact with family members. However, there are methods available to either track down your full vaccination history or at least confirm that you’ve been vaccinated in the past.
Where to Find Your Childhood Vaccination Records
The CDC suggests several potential ways to track down your vaccination records:
Ask your parents or other caregivers if they have any documentation of your childhood vaccinations.
Look through baby books or any other saved childhood papers you might have.
Contact the health services at your high school or college for records of any immunizations you may have received. Keep in mind that these records are typically kept for only 1-2 years after students leave the institution.
Reach out to previous employers, including military service, who may have required vaccinations.
Contact your doctor or a public health clinic. Keep in mind that vaccination records are typically kept for a limited time at doctor’s offices.
Get in touch with your state's health department. Some states maintain registries (Immunization Information Systems) that track adult vaccines.
You may need to call the hospital where you were born, as the first dose of the Hepatitis B vaccine is often given at birth.
With enough effort, you are likely to uncover records showing proof of your childhood vaccinations—whether original documents or later forms that required vaccination proof. Wherever you think they might be, begin your search in hopes of finding the evidence you need.
What if you can’t locate these records anywhere?
If you've searched high and low, called every doctor's office and hospital that could have your records, and explored all other possibilities, there are still options left. For one, if absolutely necessary, you can simply get the vaccines again. While it's not the most enjoyable option, it is completely safe to do so.
Another alternative is that for certain vaccines, like chickenpox, measles, mumps, rubella, and Hepatitis A, B, and C, you can take an antibody titer test to prove your immunity. This test can show your immunity, even if you got the disease naturally instead of receiving the vaccine.
For instance, the chickenpox vaccine became available in 1995, meaning many people gained immunity by having the disease rather than getting vaccinated. An antibody titer will determine if you have antibodies against the varicella virus, though it won’t tell you whether you were vaccinated or contracted the disease. Either way, it demonstrates your immune system’s ability to fight the virus, which is exactly what those requesting your records are after.
How to store your vaccination records and avoid repeating this process
If you’re like many of us and tend to forget about paperwork, once you’ve put in the effort to track down your vaccination records, you’ll want to make sure you don’t have to do it all over again. (Your future self will be grateful.)
To prevent having to search for your records again, follow the Immunization Action Coalition’s advice: provide your proof of vaccination to your healthcare provider or local public health clinic and ask them to enter your vaccination data into an official record. If your state or local health department has an immunization registry, send it there too. This will give you a “provider-verified” record, which is often required as proof of vaccination. The more places that have this information, the better protected you’ll be.
