Varicella (chickenpox) vaccine mandate in Alaska
Last week when I was in Salt Lake City in a meeting with thought leaders from across the country dealing with vaccine safety policy issues, my local school district held a community meeting to discuss the newly mandated varicella vaccine for school children. I’m sure my Wasilla readers were probably surprised that I wasn’t in attendance at this meeting and you can only imagine my frustration at not being there.
First, just to simplify things let’s drop the fancy titles and call this vaccine by it’s layman terms…the chickenpox vaccine. That alone changes many people’s perspective about this mandate. Varicella sounds very technical and scary but chickenpox is just a normal childhood vaccine that most people my age experienced as children. It was unpleasant, but for the most part we all stayed home from school for a while, tried not to scratch our pox, watched a lot of Sesame Street and then got back to being a kid. No big deal. That’s right…for the strong majority of children, the overwhelmingly vast majority, chickenpox is no big deal. And, it’s certainly a much smaller deal than the potentially devastating side effects of the vaccine.
At my Salt Lake meetings I met some of the most interesting and educated people on this topic. The folks who were from Oregon were particularly interesting. Oregon is a state that allows for a philosophical exemption (not exactly, but they have a “personal beliefs” option within their religious exemption). The state immunization and public health officers really look at the vaccine issue much differently than we do in Alaska. They understand parent concerns and they seem to be willing to accept that parents may want to use alternative schedules when it comes to vaccinating their children. The state of Oregon does not mandate the chickenpox vaccine, either.
Alaska has a long way to go if it’s leadership wants to support parents rights when it comes to their children’s health. In fact, Alaskans have some the fewest rights when it comes to vaccines compared to parents in most other states. And, with this this fresh, new mandate coming from our leadership to force every single child in the State to have a chickenpox vaccine, I must say that any chance of gaining back our rights seems quite unlikely.
If I had been in attendance at our community meeting last week it would have been to hold state and school district officials accountable to telling parents all the facts. I would have made sure parents were given the Vaccine Information Statement on the varicella vaccine that outlines all the risks of the vaccine (soreness, fever, rash, seizures, pneumonia). I would have made sure that parents were informed of their rights to use religious or medical expemptions for vaccines and that these forms were readily available (found in Appendix C of the Alaska School and Child Care Immunization manual). And, finally, I would have made sure that that “risk communication” (yes, that is an official CDC term) about chickenpox was as neutral and fact-based as possible and not just a big scare tactic.
My hope is that my work on federal policy will help improve parental rights where vaccines are concerned. Perhaps that will pave the way for states like Alaska to take a hard look at their own policies and mandates. How ironic that a conservative, Republican state that is run by leaders who pay constant lip service to “less government” and “protecting personal freedom” would be so hardline on virtually eliminating any parental rights or informed consent when it comes to childhood vaccines.
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National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC)
