Lincoln County Healthcare will offer families a $10 gas cards and the chance to win an Apple iPad mini at a series of immunization clinics this spring in an effort to make it easier for parents to have their children vaccinated.

The free clinics are made possible through a grant from the Elizabeth Ann Leach Charitable Trust. They are designed to offer a light-hearted approach to a very serious problem. Lincoln County has the second highest rate of nonimmunized children between the age of 0 and 2 in Maine. Each clinic will have giveaways and the chance to win an iPad for participating families.

The “catch-up” clinics will offer a variety of immunizations, including the standard childhood immunizations for measles, mumps, rubella and other potentially dangerous childhood diseases.

As the number of children without the standard childhood vaccination rises, the protection offered by herd immunity declines. Herd immunity is the protection offered everyone when the majority of a population (often about 90 percent) is vaccinated.

There are already signs that herd immunity is being compromised in Lincoln County, which had had the second highest rate of pertussis (whooping cough) in Maine during the first half of 2014 (the latest statistics available from the Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

For Lincoln Medical Partners Joann Kaplan, MD, that trend is worrisome.

Today, most pediatricians spends most of their time on preventive health issues, treating chronic disease like asthma, and addressing patients’ behavioral or social problems, like anxiety or inability to concentrate in class.

A few decades ago, pediatricians spent most of their time on childhood diseases that sickened millions and killed tens of thousands of children each year. According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, just the standard childhood immunizations save about 33,000 lives every year and prevent 14 million different cases of disease.

The success of vaccines in largely wiping out many of those childhood diseases may be of the biggest reasons parents are resisting vaccinating their children.

Dr. Kaplan said that when she talks to parents who are resisting immunizing their children they often perceive the risk of the diseases the vaccines protect against as smaller than they are and the risk posed by getting the vaccines themselves as much larger.

As the mother of three fully immunized children, Kaplan understands the risks of childhood diseases that vaccinations protect against, and she also understands the research into vaccine safety.

“The safety and effectiveness of vaccines are constantly being studied,” said Kaplan. “The science behind them is very strong.”

The vaccination clinics will take place: April 11 at the Lincoln Medical Partners Waldoboro office from 9 a.m. to noon; on June 6 at the Lincoln Medical Partners Pediatrics Damariscotta office from 9 a.m. to noon; on Aug. 8 at the Lincoln Medical Partners Waldoboro office from 9 a.m. to noon; and on Oct. 17 at the Lincoln Medical Partners Damariscotta office from 9 a.m. to noon.