Tennessee has halted all vaccination awareness campaigns for teens, including for Covid-19 vaccines

[ad_1]

The downtime affects all communication with teens, including Covid-19 second-dose reminders, HPV reminders and kindergarten vaccination surveys, according to documents circulated within the department obtained by CNN and first reported by The Tennessean.

The Department of Health did not respond to CNN’s inquiries about whether awareness and vaccination practices on Covid -19 or other vaccines had changed.

The move comes amid a heated debate in the state, which has been lagging behind in vaccinations against Covid-19, due to parental consent to vaccinations.

Dr. Michelle Fiscus, who said she was fired from her job as the state’s medical director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization after a controversy over vaccinating children against the coronavirus, told CNN that she and other health officials are under pressure as Covid-19 vaccinations become increasingly politicized.

She saw this scrutiny come to a head when she shared a memo that laid out the state’s policy, which allows minors between the ages of 14 and 17 to get medical care without parental consent.

Lawmakers quickly began calling the Department of Health with questions about the memo that some said undermined parental authority. On Monday, Fiscus, a pediatrician, was fired from her role.

According to the documents, Fiscus has typically posted communications in August recognizing National Immunization Awareness Month, but it was said last week that according to commissioner Lisa Percy, there will be no outreach this year.

Fiscus told CNN reporter Chris Cuomo on Tuesday that she learned that the outreach even included communications for school flu vaccinations and child immunizations.

Fiscus said her dismissal was a symptom of the trend in many public health departments across the country. In her state, she sees “a Department of Health bowing to some sword clamor for some of our legislators who have felt it inappropriate to share the mature secondary doctrine that has been the case law of the Tennessee Supreme Court since 1987.”

She said the politics around vaccines that started with Covid-19 has spread to a more widespread mistrust of all vaccines.

“These viruses and bacteria that can harm these diseases are nonpartisan, and they don’t care who you are or who you voted for,” she said. The way to prevent the disease is vaccination.

National pressure

The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) told CNN in May that more than 250 public health officials have left their jobs since the pandemic began — many against their will, and others under pressure from people opposing public health efforts to control the pandemic.

Fiscus said it is concerned about the safety of people in its state. “I’m angry that public health is political in this case,” she told CNN. “Public health shouldn’t be political at all,” she added.

“People across the state government are scared to death that they are going to lose their jobs because of this. We are not allowed to do what is right and evidence-based and what the CDC and other national experts are recommending about how to manage this pandemic. As a result, our case count is down It’s going up. We’ve only got 38% of Tennessee residents vaccinated, and deltas are coming from our border states of Arkansas and Missouri.”

Earlier Monday, three health policy experts published a commentary in the American Medical Association’s JAMA Pediatrics arguing that teens should be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not to get vaccinated.

“Children and teens have the power to understand and explain low-risk, high-benefit health care interventions. So state laws should allow minors to consent to COVID-19 vaccinations without parental permission,” Larissa Morgan of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law writes Jason Schwartz of Yale and Dominic Syst From the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

“In the context of vaccination, some older minors may have a more accurate understanding of the risks and benefits of the vaccine than reluctant guardians.”

CNN’s Maggie Fox, Angela Paragas, and Martin Savage contributed to this report.

.

[ad_2]