07/15/2021

The Next COVID-19 Battle Will Be About Vaccinating Kids

The public health system is prepared but not for the politics of delivering shots

On Monday, the Tennessee Department of Health fired its top vaccine official, Michelle Fiscus. Her transgression: In May, she had sent a memo to pharmacies and physicians in the state, relaying a Tennessee Supreme Court decision that allows teens to seek medical care, including vaccinations, without their parents' consent. At the time, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had just authorized the Pfizer vaccine for 12- to 17-year-olds, and one for the Moderna vaccine was soon to follow.

Fiscus' memo was approved by the governor's staff, and it contained no policy changes. The legal ruling it discussed was handed down in 1987. State legislators, though, accused her of "prodding" children to seek the vaccine. She was summoned to two hearings; at one, a legislator proposed dissolving the entire state health department in retaliation.

In a statement she gave to The Tennessean Monday evening, Fiscus said that, to protect itself, the department has shut down all its communication campaigns about vaccination. "Not just COVID-19 vaccine outreach for teens, but ALL communications around vaccines of any kind," she wrote. "No back-to-school messaging to the more than 30,000 parents who did not get their children measles vaccines last year due to the pandemic. No messaging around human papillomavirus vaccine to the residents of the state with one of the highest HPV cancer rates in the country." (On Tuesday, The Tennessean confirmed that vaccine promotion, and vaccination clinics held at schools, had been shut down.)

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