- October 31, 2024
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The Florida Department of Health in Flagler County would like to give parents the chance to have their children vaccinated at school for HPV at the same time as the kids are vaccinated for TDaP (Tetanus, Diphtheria and Pertussis), in sixth grade. After School Board member Maria Barbosa repeatedly expressed reservations to that proposal during a live radio interview on WNZF, DOH-Flagler Administrator Bob Snyder called her anti-science and anti-vaccine. Barbosa said he was putting words in her mouth.
By the time the two were on the air Friday morning on Flagler Broadcasting's Free For All Friday program Aug. 23 — Snyder speaking from the studio, and Barbosa by phone — Snyder had twice appeared before the School Board in workshops in an attempt to convince the board to allow the health department to administer the vaccine. The process would be opt-in: Interested parents would have to sign a form to allow it to be administered to their children, and parents who don't want it for their children would have the option not to sign.
But three of the School Board's five members — Barbosa, Janet McDonald and Colleen Conklin — expressed various concerns, ranging from the safety of the vaccine to the process through which parents are informed about the option to whether or not offering the vaccine on campuses warrants the loss in class time that it would take to administer it. (The health department has said it would take only minutes, since it wold be given alongside the TDaP vaccine). By the close of the last workshop, on Aug. 20, the board was unwilling to OK the DOH-Flagler's request outright, instead suggesting that Snyder and his colleagues talk to parents about the vaccine at PTO meetings and SAC meetings, and survey their opinions, before reporting back to the board in the future.
"The HPV vaccine ... has been proven to be effective — scientific, peer-reviewed medical research studies, scientific studies, have proven that this HPV vaccine is effective in stopping cancer down the road," Snyder said to Barbosa on the radio program. "And this is about accessibility; as we explained to you, it would take minutes to provide the vaccine, to piggyback providing children with the TDaP vaccine and the flu vaccine. In this day and age, it’s just remarkable, actually, that you are against that. And to be honest with you, we do appreciate and welcome the opportunity to educate and to talk to parents at PTO meetings, like you suggested, and we will do that. But we’re at odds here. And you say that you make decisions on what’s in the right and best interests of children, and you’re surprising me. And I don’t think you’re doing that.
"I think I am doing that," Barbosa countered.
"As the health officer of Flagler County —" Snyder said.
"That’s the reason why I want to see what the parents are — and you tell me I’m against about this vaccination; no, I’m not," Barbosa said. "Because even myself, I have some vaccination even as an adult. I mean, that is a comment you are putting out there, that I am against it."
"As far as I’m concerned, you’re anti-science and you’re anti-vaccine, and it’s a real shame that you’re a member of the School Board," Snyder said. "So voters, pay attention."
"No, I am not anti-vaccine," Barbosa said. "You’re putting words in my mouth where it does not exist. And I do apologize for that, but because I will not give you the word 'Yes' right away, you are taking it personal. And I do apologize for that as well, that you feel that way, but no, like I said, my big concern is, I want to know what the parents think about it."
Barbosa expressed some objections: She said she'd wanted to know what was in the vaccine, and hadn't been provided that information from the health department and had to look it up on the internet. She had also objected to the age of a 2016 CDC informational flier the health department had provided, and also said she wanted to see what the consent form provided to parents would actually look like.
Free For All Friday host David Ayres asked, "So, what you're saying is you’re not necessarily a no-vote; you could become a yes-vote with more information?"
"Correct," Barbosa said.
Gretchen Smith, the Florida Department of Health in Flagler County's communications manager, told Barbosa during the radio program that the CDC form that Barbosa had objected to because it was several years old was in fact the most recent one the CDC had published.
"We have no control over ... the CDC, when they update their forms," Smith said. "So that came out in 2016; we can’t get a newer form unless the CDC actually put that out."
As to the consent form, Smith said, it's the same one that is already in use for the other vaccines.
"And again, this is all voluntary," Smith said.
She then spoke about a concern that McDonald had expressed during the last workshop: that vaccinating children at school uses up valuable instructional time.
Smith said she is herself a parent of children who went through the Flagler Schools system.
"And you know ... if I had gotten something that said, ‘We’re going to be giving these shots in school,’ I’d be all over it," Smith said. "Because you know what? ... It’s kind of a burden, sometimes, to take your kids out of school for half a day, sometimes for a whole day, sit in the pediatrician’s office for an hour, maybe more, and then go back to work. And then they’ve been out of the classroom for several hours —and, you know, it also cuts into your work time. So we’re trying to make it so that parents have this as an option."
If individual parents don't want the vaccine administrated to their kids, that's fine, Smith said.
"But ... if we can save one life down the line by giving a kid a shot that’ll prevent them from getting cancer, that’s what I think is most important, and that’s what I think is being missed in this whole conversation," Smith said.
Barbosa said that wasn't the case.
"We do want to save lives," Barbosa said. "The only thing is, like I said, it is a very controversial issue — not about me, it is in general in the community and all over in the world. And that’s why it is very important to have a survey out there to see what is the parents' thoughts about it."
