Maybe a client hears about them in the comment section of the Facebook group “Medical Exemption Accepted,” or on the r/unvaccinated forum on Reddit. Maybe it’s through an interview posted on the video-sharing platform Rumble. Or maybe it’s the targeted advertisements on Google: “We do medical exemptions.”
Cassandra Clerkin, a mother in upstate New York, first got in touch with Frontline Health Advocates near the start of the 2024–2025 school year, after hearing they had doctors who would write exemptions from school immunization requirements. One of Clerkin’s children, she said, had suffered seizures after receiving a vaccine. The family didn’t want more shots. But New York has some of the country’s strictest school immunization policies.
Perhaps Frontline could help.
Vaccine mandates have a long history in the United States, but they’ve been subject to fresh public attention—and partisan dispute—since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Frontline Health Advocates seemingly emerged from pandemic-era battles with a model that, experts say, appears to be unique: It bills itself as a standalone organization that supplies people across the US with medical exemptions from vaccination requirements—for a fee of $495.
On forms obtained by Undark, Frontline’s listed addresses are a storage facility in Denison, Texas, and a package store in Sedona, Arizona. The group publishes little information online about its leadership or finances, but it has quietly developed a following.
There’s little question that Frontline exemptions sometimes work, and some parents report positive experiences with the organization. But there are real questions about whether its legal strategy would hold up in court—and whether clients are confused about what, precisely, they are receiving.
In upstate New York, Clerkin said she spoke with a representative from Frontline by phone about the process. They made it sound, she said, like getting an exemption “would be pretty seamless.”