*This article originally posted at vacTRUTH.com.
Jeffry John Aufderheide
VacTRUTH
August 26, 2009
The pieces of the pandemic puzzle are coming together as the H1N1 Swine Flu hysteria is reaching new heights. A largely uncovered white paper published by RAND Corporation in March of 2009, sponsored by pharmaceutical giant Sanofi Pasteur, identifies parental consent laws, medical homes, and lack of access to medical records as main barriers “for immunizing low-income adolescents.” The solution proposed to Sanofi Pasteur? Turn schools into a vaccine wonderland.
The triad of barriers to mass-vaccinate adolescents which were identified in RAND Corp’s white paper are:
1. Parental Consent Laws
2. Absence of a reliable Medical Home
3. Access to vaccine registration information
There are many relevant quotes throughout the white-paper to support this claim. Here are just a few…
“It would appear at first blush that vaccinating teens in a school setting would be a
practical way to address the barriers posed by the lack of a medical home.
Schools are the only place where the vast majority of adolescents are found
consistently and predictably ([1] pg 19) (emphasis mine)
“Many of the barriers we identified—while seemingly distinct—were tied to current
consent laws. We found that the requirement that parental consent for
vaccination be provided in real time clearly limits the vaccination of adolescents
in venues such as schools, where parents and adolescents are not likely to be
together.” ([1] pg 27) (emphasis mine)
“Ambiguity and variability in consent laws also hinder the role of alternative vaccinators and the use of information technology to improve documentation, management, and communication. Current approaches for collecting consent … impede effective and efficient program management that might be possible with modernized parental consent laws.“ ([1] pg 27) (emphasis mine)
While immunization registries have traditionally focused on younger children,
improving their utility for the adolescent population has great potential to facilitate
improvement in the management of adolescent vaccination programs. One
natural partnership, not yet fully realized, is with local schools. ([1] pg 44) (emphasis mine)
According to the preface of the document, this endeavor started in 2007 as Sanofi Pasteur desired information concerning the current logistical climate for vaccinating the less fortunate. However, the title of the document, ‘Strategies and Models for Promoting Adolescent Vaccination for Low-Income Population’ is misleading. The recommendations that RAND produced for Sanofi Pasteur have ramifications for the entire scholastic population, as shown in the following passage.
“Although our original charge was to focus on low-income adolescents,we found the current policy and practice infrastructure supporting the vaccination of the general population of adolescents to be underdeveloped and thus unlikely to yield substantial increases in vaccination uptake among low-income adolescents in the absence of structural change. For this reason, we addressed the issue of adolescent immunization from a broad perspective, identifying more general approaches that can be tailored to low-income populations, and addressed specific issues and challenges for low-income adolescents where appropriate. ” ([1] pg 5)(emphasis mine)
It is critical to bring into focus throughout the entirety of this article who is the intended audience of the RAND Corp dossier: Sanofi Pasteur.
Read more…
