Immunizations

Vaccines are one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, and they help keep people and the economy healthy. That’s the message TMA is sending to lawmakers this session as the COVID-19 pandemic continues and vaccine hesitancy and conscientious exemptions are on the rise.

Read all of the Texas Legislative Hotlines here.

The uneven rollout of COVID-19 vaccines created at least one bright spot for Texas physicians: It highlighted how the state could make vaccination more efficient. County medical societies stepped in to fill gaps in the state’s mass efforts to get physicians and health care workers vaccinated. And ongoing hiccups with vaccine distribution and tracking continue to frustrate Texas physicians, namely with the state’s vaccine registry, ImmTrac2, and rising vaccine exemptions – top fixes on the Texas Medical Association agenda this legislative session.

One of the most contentious areas of health policy over the past two decades has been the safety of vaccination. Vaccines prevent the outbreak of diseases that used to be widespread. Yet many Americans refuse or delay the vaccination of their children out of fear that it could lead to autism, even though scientific consensus refutes this claim.

The State Board of Education has approved health education standards that would require public schools to teach the importance of human papillomavirus vaccines beginning in seventh grade.

If school districts during an epidemic want to exclude students who have declined vaccinations for reasons of conscience, both the law and public health considerations are on their side, the Texas Medical Association has told Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Vaccines are all about reducing the risk of getting a disease; anti-vaccine arguments are designed to downplay how risky those diseases can be.

Houston, Fort Worth, Plano, and Austin are among the cities in the nation with the highest number of kindergartners who have not received vaccinations because of nonmedical reasons, according to the study published this week in the journal PLOS Medicine.