Florida’s plan to phase out childhood vaccination mandates upends decades of public health policy, Northeastern experts say
Florida would be the first state in the nation to end the mandates. Will other states, or the federal government, follow suit?
As Florida plans to phase out childhood vaccine mandates, Northeastern policy experts say it would undo decades of public health protections and expose children to once-common pediatric diseases that devastated communities.
They also say to expect more challenges to both childhood and adult vaccine access as early as this month as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services, reviews the immunization schedules.
Concerns over outbreaks
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo announced Florida’s plan Wednesday to end childhood vaccination requirements for school attendance. Florida would be the first state to end childhood vaccine mandates.
The move concerns Northeastern’s Wendy Parmet, a leading expert on public health law.
“There are a lot of vaccine-preventable diseases that are likely to reemerge,” says Parmet, who directs the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern’s School of Law.
“It’s very worrisome as we go into the school year,” adds Neil Maniar, director of Northeastern’s master of public health program.
He says he is especially concerned about highly transmissible diseases like measles, which killed two children during a recent outbreak among an unvaccinated population in West Texas.
“There’s a high likelihood that we will see measles outbreaks in Florida as vaccination rates drop within different communities and within different schools,” Maniar says.
Many parents in Florida will stick to childhood vaccination schedules despite the lack of a mandate, Maniar says.
But he has concerns about disruptions to the infrastructure to deliver vaccines, and communication about the availability and importance of vaccines.
September recommendations
Current immunization practices are under scrutiny by Kennedy.
He fired members of the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and forced out CDC Director Susan Monarez, whose dismissal led to the resignation of several high-level CDC officials.
Parmet says to expect further possible changes to government vaccination later this month, as Kennedy promises to announce policy changes he claims “will dramatically impact the effects” related to autism, according to Reuters.
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Also this month, Sept. 18-19, is a scheduled meeting of the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that includes the measles, mumps and rubella and hepatitis B and RSV vaccination schedules for children on its agenda, Parmet says.
Members newly appointed by Kennedy “certainly might alter, revise, reconsider or revoke the (current) recommendations,” she says.
The advisory committee’s recommendations are critical to ensuring health coverage for vaccines, so reducing them might place the cost of vaccines out of reach for many families, Parmet says.
At this time, she says, “I think a lot of insurers are going to continue to cover vaccines because it’s cost-effective. It’s a lot cheaper to give a kid a measles vaccine than to treat a kid with measles.”
Herd immunity
“One of the things we worry about is Florida is a major tourist destination,” Maniar says. “There is definitely a likelihood that outbreaks can spread to other cities within Florida, other states around the country.”
“The goal of mandates is to make sure that in classrooms there are enough children vaccinated so that you are protecting everyone through a concept called herd immunity,” he says.
There’s a reason why parents rushed to embrace vaccines for rubella, mumps, measles, whooping cough and diphtheria as soon as they became available, Parmet says.
“People don’t remember these diseases. They don’t remember how terrible these diseases were,” she says. “The pre-vaccine era was not the Hollywood portrayal of ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ It was the funeral of a child.”