- Doctors with the Michigan Academy of Family Physicians recommend vaccines to keep children safe
- The guidance comes as the US Department of Health and Human Services moves away from broadly recommending immunization
- A ‘storm of information’ has contributed to a rise in vaccine skepticism, doctors say, contributing to a lack of trust in public health
Childhood vaccines are safe and effective and Michigan parents should continue to vaccinate their children even as federal recommendations shift, according to a group representing the state’s family doctors.
“We do know that vaccine hesitancy is putting children’s health care at risk, and we want to clear up any misconceptions that are out there,” said Dr. Bashar Yalldo, president of the Michigan Academy of Family Physicians, during a Zoom news conference Monday.
The doctors’ recommendations come as the US Department of Health and Human Services, under the leadership of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., pivots away from its longstanding position championing vaccine use to imposing more restrictions on immunization.
Yalldo, who practices family medicine at Henry Ford Health in Howell, said the MAFP does not solely rely on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for guidance.
“We follow our recommendations from the American Academy of Family Physicians,” he said. “The American Academy has an immunization schedule that’s taken data from and information from the American Academy of Pediatrics, some from the CDC, and some from other from some other organizations, and they’ve compiled it together to give recommendations.”
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Dr. Jennifer Morse, who serves as the medical director for several health departments in the Lower Peninsula, said “there’s been a lot of harm done to the trust in public health recently.”
“We’re living right now in a time where we may be seeing some statements being made, particularly in social media, from some of our officials, that are not necessarily based in scientific evidence, and that has made it very challenging for those of us who are in the positions we are trying to help navigate this storm of information,” Morse said.
The doctors’ statements come less than two weeks after the Food and Drug Administration approved the updated COVID-19 vaccine, but limited access for many healthy adults.
Kennedy recently instructed his agency’s civil rights office to monitor participants in a federally funded free immunization program for children to ensure compliance with religious and conscience exemptions from childhood vaccine mandates. He stressed the importance of balancing “public health goals with individual freedom” in the Vaccines for Children Program.
And during a testy US Senate hearing last week, Kennedy defended his cancellation of $500 million in mRNA vaccine research as senators hounded his decision to fire several prominent doctors, including the new head of the CDC and members of a federal vaccine advisory committee.
‘Rumors and incorrect information’
The family physicians stressed that while vaccines cannot stop all infections from happening, they are highly effective at reducing the risk of getting seriously ill and dying, and are much safer than the diseases themselves.
Chicken pox and whooping cough, Morse said, are examples of diseases significantly reduced by vaccination protection.
Morse, who runs health departments in parts of central, western and mid-Michigan, said people should be wary about the sources they turn to for information about immunizations.
“Much of the rumors and incorrect information about vaccines start from or are spread by people that profit from spreading that information either by selling other products that could be used instead or from internet platform profit or by some other means of profit,” she said.
Dr. William Nettleton, the medical director of Kalamazoo County and Calhoun County health departments, said his patients often ask about the link between vaccines and autism, which is a “rumor that’s been dispelled by many studies.”
Patients also ask why there are more vaccines available to children today than in years past, according to Nettleton. He said advances in medical research have allowed more vaccines to come online that offer better immune protection and more coverage against diseases like hepatitis B. The CDC began recommending hep B vaccination for newborns in 1991.
Family doctors are tasked with guiding patients through nuance, he said, but sources of bad information online and elsewhere sometimes prevail driving an increased trend of vaccine hesitancy and skepticism.
“I think sometimes we have forgotten that vaccination has won us freedom from diseases such as polio that once plagued Michigan families,” Nettleton said.
While polio has been nearly eradicated globally, diseases like measles, mumps and rubella pose a “real threat” in the US, according to Dr. Beena Nagappala who works as a family physician in Clinton Township and oversees Henry Ford’s school-based clinics in Metro Detroit.
“These illnesses haven’t disappeared. They’ve just been kept at bay thanks to widespread vaccination efforts,” she said, adding that community immunity helps prevent outbreaks.
Michigan’s recommendations
With many changes on the federal level, and the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices expected to vote on its recommendations for vaccines later this month, the doctors touted Michigan’s public health leadership to promote vaccine access and coverage at a time of uncertainty.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is recommending COVID-19 vaccination in alignment with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and is promoting seasonal flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccines.
Other states are also crafting their own guidelines.
California, Washington, Oregon and Hawaii have formed the West Coast Health Alliance to draft public health guidance separate from the CDC.
New York declared a statewide disaster emergency over vaccine access, granting expanded access to the shots, and Massachusetts ordered insurers to cover immunizations to bypass the more stringent federal recommendations.
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