Inside Tennessee to restart nearly all vaccine outreach paused amid GOP pressure,
Outreach paused amid Republican pressure
The Tennessee state government will resume all forms of vaccine outreach, with the narrow exception of social media posts aimed specifically at children, after halting many forms of advocacy this month in response to conservative pressure, the state’s top health official said Friday.
Tennessee also faces a new “surge” of coronavirus that shows no signs of slowing, and deaths from the virus are expected to spike in coming weeks, the health official warned.
Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey said the Tennessee Department of Health will restart outreach efforts recommending vaccines for children and once again hold events on school property offering the COVID-19 vaccine, including some next week. Department staff are no longer instructed to strip the agency logo from public-facing vaccine information, she said.
“Nothing has been stopped permanently,” Piercey said during a press briefing. “We put a pause on many things, and then we have resumed all of those.”
Piercey said her agency will also, in rare circumstances, provide the COVID-19 vaccine to minors without the permission of their parents. This statement is a contradiction to an announcement made this week by conservative lawmakers, who said Piercey agreed in a private meeting to stop this practice.
The Tennessee Department of Health drew nationwide attention this month after exclusive reporting by The Tennessean revealed the agency had dramatically scaled back efforts to promote the coronavirus vaccine to minors. The changes came after conservative state lawmakers lambasted the agency for gently recommending the vaccine to minors and proposed dissolving the entire agency to make the outreach stop.
In the wake of lawmakers’ wrath, the health department started quietly making changes, according to a series of internal documents obtained by The Tennessean. It deleted some pro-vaccine Facebook and Twitter posts that triggered lawmakers and instructed employees to stop all vaccine-related social media posts aimed at teenagers and not to hold any vaccination events focused on teens or on school property.
Days later, agency staff were told to stop all vaccine outreach to adolescents or about adolescent vaccines for all diseases, not just the coronavirus. Agency employees were told to remove the health department logo from vaccine information given to the public. The agency also fired its top vaccine official, Michelle Fiscus, and postponed an online immunization summit for medical professionals.
These changes, which took effect just as the coronavirus began to spread again in Tennessee, brought heavy attention to the state. The rollback was criticized by both state and national political figures, including former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a doctor and prominent Tennessee Republican, and global health advocate Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Dan Rather, an iconic television news anchor, called the decisions “lunacy.”
Piercey, who was vacationing in Greece during much of the controversy but has since returned to Tennessee, stressed on Friday that the agency never stopped providing vaccines, and only reduced its “communications and marketing” related to vaccinations.
This outreach was “paused” to give the agency time to ensure its message was aimed not at minors but at their parents, who are the “best decision makers” when it comes to vaccination of minors, Piercey said.
“The reason that we paused is because we wanted to leave no room for interpretation about where we are shooting,” Piercey said. “And we are shooting to get the message to parents. And there was a perception that we were marketing to children and that totally was against our view about the importance of parental authority.”
When asked why — if the goal was purely to avoid messaging to minors — staff were told to remove the agency’s logo from any vaccine documents it gives to the public, Piercey said the department needed time to ensure the documents met its new standard.
“We just wanted to be extra cautious in the short-term to make sure everything that had our logo on it was messaged appropriately, just as we intended to,” Piercey said. “Now that we have assured that, we are putting our logo back on things.”
Piercey said the one form of vaccine outreach that would not return were social media posts that spoke directly to minors. The agency will still include kids in vaccine outreach on social media and advertisements, but that messaging will mention parents and feature photos of parents or entire families, Piercey said.
Tennessee will still sparingly vaccinate teens without parents’ permission
Piercey also confirmed the health department will continue to sparingly invoke Tennessee’s Mature Minor Doctrine, a longstanding legal doctrine that permits children above the age of 14 to be vaccinated without permission from their parents. The doctrine allows, but does not require, medical providers to provide the vaccine.
The doctrine infuriated some conservative lawmakers. Back in June, several Republicans on Tennessee’s Joint Government Operations Committee criticized Piercey for allowing the use of the doctrine, insisting that children should not be permitted to get vaccinated against coronavirus without parental consent. Piercey said the health department was only aware of the doctrine being invoked eight times, three of which were for her own children, who were vaccinated while she was at work.
Lawmakers returned to the issue this week. During another meeting of the same committee, Sen. Kerry Roberts, Rspringfield, and Rep. John Ragan, Roak Ridge, read a joint statement announcing they had met privately with Piercey and a representative of the administration of Gov. Bill Lee about vaccines.
During that meeting, they said, Piercey “confirmed” it was not the policy of her agency or the administration to vaccinate minors without the consent of parents.
“At this point, no state-related entity should be administering the COVID-19 vaccines, which the FDA considers an unapproved product under emergency use authorization, without parental consent, or marketing to minors,” Roberts said.
Piercey said Friday the lawmakers didn’t have it quite right. The health department would continue to use the doctrine as appropriate, although those circumstances would be in “nuanced and fringe” cases, she said. The doctrine can also still be invoked by private vaccine providers, she said.
OVID-19 infections, fueled by delta variant, surge again
Tennessee will restart its vaccine outreach just as vaccines are needed most. The coronavirus pandemic is returning in force in the state, where less than 39% of residents are fully vaccinated.
Tennessee’s average infections per day has nearly quintupled in the past month — from 198 to 918 — and nearly all new infections are among the unvaccinated. The state is now aware of nearly 9,000 active infections, the most since early May, and the average test positivity rate has risen from a low point of 2.1% to 8.8%, according to state virus data.