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The Chautauqua County Health Department is looking to accept a grant to address vaccine hesitancy while one county legislator seemed unsure about accepting the funding.
During a meeting of the legislature’s Audit and Control Committee, members were asked to amend the Health and Human Services adopted budget to accept a $75,000 grant from the National Association of County and City Health Officials Vaccine Information Equity and Demand Creation Project Funding.
In the resolution, it states the purpose is to address vaccine hesitancy in Chautauqua County subgroups, the aim being to increase rates of vaccination among children as well as the Black/African-American community.
“This addresses improving our immunization rates,” said Christine Schuyler, director of the county’s Health and Human Services Department. “When we look at health equity and accessibility to health care, especially in preventive health care services, usually for vaccinations those who we find who are most vulnerable are the lowest immunization rates. We have a lot of child immunization in the minority populations who don’t have as good an access to the services as the rest of the population.”
While the grant would address hesitancy for the COVID vaccine, there are a host of other vaccinations as well, including pertussis (whooping cough), measles, mumps, shingles, HPV, and more.
Schuyler said a countywide coalition that works on vaccine awareness will help develop the campaign. Even though the resolution singles out the Black/African-American community, she said the money is designed to help all sorts of communities that have low vaccination rates, including the Hispanic population, Amish, elderly and children.
“Health inequities do exists,” she said. “They exist in county, our state, our country, and it’s part of our job to ensure that everybody has equal assess to health care, and offer education, information and services.”
Legislator Terry Niebel, R-Sheridan, said he doesn’t like the idea of encouraging parents to get the COVID-19 vaccine for children. “I don’t have a problem with you promoting vaccines for smallpox, or scarlet fever, or any of these other things. But promoting COVID shots for children, I’m not there,” he said.
But Schuyler said they can’t single out one particular disease in their promotion of vaccines. “Mr. Niebel, there are a slew of vaccinations that are recommended for children, a wide gamut of them.
“I’m not going to say that we’re not going to recommend COVID vaccinations for children when they are approved by the FDA, recommended by the American Association of Pediatrics. If that’s what you want me to do is we’re going to recommend certain vaccinations for certain people and not others as the local health department, then I will not accept this grant because I’m not going to do that,” she said.
Schuyler added that if they refuse the funds, the $75,000 will just go back to the nonprofit organization that is offering it. They can’t use the money for something else.
Legislator Dan Pavlock, R-Sinclairville, said addressing vaccine hesitancy is not something new. “This push for vaccination was present before COVID started,” he said. “A few years ago schools changed their rules and mandated that kids get vaccinated for certain things or they don’t come to school. That was a pretty hot topic for a while.”
Schuyler thinks the COVID vaccine push will follow the flu shot.
“Influenza is recommended and I think probably that’s where the COVID vaccine will end up,” she said. “It’s not going to be a requirement for school, I don’t see it happening, just like influenza isn’t at this time.”
Legislator Jay Gould said vaccine hesitancy is nothing new. “I’m old enough to remember we went through the same discussion for polio,” he said.
All committee members, including Niebel, voted in favor of the grant. The full Legislature is scheduled to vote on the grant on Wednesday for final approval.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 66% of the county’s total population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 59.3% has been fully vaccinated. Further, 62.7% of the population over the age of 5 has been fully vaccinated and 66% of the population over the age of 12 has been fully vaccinated.
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