NASHVILLE, Tenn. (CN) — After halting all vaccine outreach efforts to minors under pressure from Republican lawmakers, the Tennessee Department of Health will resume those efforts with the exception of social media posts directed only to minors, the department’s commissioner said Friday.
Last week, the department fired its immunization program director Michelle Fiscus, who upon her firing said the agency had stopped vaccine outreach for all diseases — not just for Covid-19 — to adolescents.
The shakeup came after Fiscus distributed a memo to health care providers administering Covid-19 vaccines that contained a summary of the state’s mature minor doctrine — a legal precedent set by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1987 which states that minors 14 and above can be medically treated without parental consent if their provider determines they’re “sufficiently mature.”
In limited circumstances, minors can still be immunized without parental consent under the doctrine, the health department confirmed Friday. Fiscus noted it “was always the case that it is used in rare circumstances.”
“Looks like they now agree to uphold it, so it seems odd that I was fired for communicating the facts of the case law in response to questions from medical providers,” Fiscus said in a statement following Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey’s comments.
At the time Fiscus’ memo was circulated, Republican lawmakers interpreted it as instructing providers on how to legally vaccinate minors without parental consent and voiced concerns over what they called targeted “marketing” to minors, accusing the health department of “peer-pressuring” teens into getting immunized.
Representative Scott Cepicky, R-Culleoka, also suggested the agency be dissolved and reconstituted during a contentious June 16 joint hearing of the Government Operations Committee.
That suggestion was not considered at the committee’s subsequent meeting on Wednesday. Instead, the committee's co-chairman, Senator Kerry Roberts, R-Springfield, read a lengthy joint statement saying Piercey reassured him and Representative John Ragan, R-Oak Ridge, that it is not department policy to administer vaccines to children without parental consent.
“To be clear, the Tennessee Department of Health was not asked to stop vaccinating children, nor have they stopped vaccinating children for Covid-19 or any other disease,” Roberts said. “Rather, they were asked to stop vaccinating children for Covid-19 without parental consent and to stop marketing to minors.”
At a press briefing on Friday, Piercy said the department “paused” its outreach efforts “to look at our marketing materials, to look at our flyers and postcards, and all of the other public facing materials, to make sure they were appropriately directed at parents.”
“We were met with quite a bit of resistance … with how we are addressing vaccines in minors,” she said. “And while it was never the intention of the department to target minors — and the department felt that we were educating — over the course of several conversations, not only in that committee hearing, but afterwards, it became pretty apparent … that there was a gap in the perception of how it was being received, and we wanted to be exceedingly clear that parents are the authority.”
Piercy said she wasn’t aware of any cancelled vaccination events, though “there might have been some that had to be pushed out a little bit because of that pause, but we tried to do that very quickly so we didn't cause any disruption.”
Immunization events and awareness campaigns are typically held around the beginning of the school year.
Additionally, Piercy said the department is not directing local health departments to stop using the mature minor doctrine to vaccinate minors without parental consent.
“We all recognize that — including Chairman Roberts as of yesterday when I talked to him and the governor, as well — we do recognize there are some very unique situations where there are older teenagers that might be in social situations that don't allow them to have parents come in with them for one reason or the other,” Piercy said.
She did not respond to questions about Fiscus’ firing.
In an internal two-page memo dated July 9, Chief Medical Officer Tim Jones recommended Fiscus be fired based on her “failure to maintain good working relationships with members of her team, her lack of effective leadership, her lack of appropriate management, and unwillingness to consult with superiors and other internal stakeholders on [immunization program] projects.”
Fiscus rebutted each of Jones’ claims in a lengthy statement and released her annual job performance evaluations, all of which showed positive reviews of her performance, including some which were reviewed by Jones.
“It’s unfortunate that TDH chose to pause outreach to vulnerable populations during back to school and that we lost two weeks of critical time to vaccinate children, but I’m happy to hear they’re resuming now,” Fiscus said in her statement.
She added, “Dr. Piercy also tends to omit that my team was never involved in marketing. Anything that was posted to social media would have been approved by the gov’s [communications] office and Dr. Piercey. Yet, the ‘inappropriateness’ of those messages is always tied to the immunization program. Leaders with integrity take responsibility, rather than passing blame to their staff.”
Follow Rosana Hughes on Twitter
Follow @@HughesRosana
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
Minnesota governor appoints two Supreme Court justices April 22, 2024 -
