one thing before school starts

and it's the shot record sitting in your kid's school file.

Measles rates are still running high around the country, and all the summer visitors moving through Alaska raise the odds of it turning up here. The Interior also starts this school year with vaccination rates below the state and national averages.

It's the kind of errand that slides to the bottom of the August list. So two Fairbanks clinics are making it about as easy as it gets. The public health center takes walk-ins Wednesdays and Thursdays until seven at night, no appointment needed. And Chief Andrew Isaac Medical Center is running back-to-school clinics through August twenty-fifth, with evening and weekend times so working parents can actually make one.

There's even a sweetener: kids through eighteen get a fifteen dollar gift card for coming in for a back-to-school checkup.

The nurses will tell you kids catch this easier and get hit harder by it than adults do. Routine doses come due at kindergarten, again at eleven, and again at sixteen, so the record is worth a look even if you think you're covered.

The health team has been running practice drills for possible exposures too, including out in the villages. All the clinic dates and hours are in the description below.