With Oregon schools’ deadline looming, pop-up clinics get kids immunized

Oregon’s overall school-age vaccination rate lags behind the national average.
Enrique Campos did not want a shot. The shaggy haired boy wailed in his mother’s arms while she calmly rubbed his shoulder and murmured into his hair.

After the nurse at the free vaccination clinic in East Portland finished checking and double checking that he had the right shot and the right arm, the needle went in. Told it was over, Enrique, 7, stopped crying. His sisters clapped. The boy looked up sheepishly, his face streaked with tears. The anticipation had been worse than the pinch.

“Like any mom — we want the best for them,” his mother, Loren Campos, said later, speaking in Spanish. “You try to relax him, that’s the only thing you can do. Hug him, that’s the only thing.”

The family had been vaccinated in El Salvador, where they lived until a few months ago, but there weren’t as many required shots there, Campos said. When they got to Portland, she realized her kids had to catch up.

“I need to get it now or I am not going to [go to] school,” said Miranda Campos, 9. That was reason enough for the self-possessed Ainsworth Elementary student to get her shots — all three of them — without complaint.