Amid a post-Thanksgiving outbreak of measles in South Carolina — reporting 111 infections through Thursday morning — Florida pediatricians this week said vaccine hesitancy is growing among parents of their young patients. They say confusion is being fueled by Florida’s top public-health officer, Joseph Ladapo, and the nation’s highest-ranking vaccine skeptic, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., head of the Trump administration’s U.S. Health and Human Services Department.
With the nation's latest measles outbreak making headlines, sparks are likely to fly Friday when pediatricians, family physicians, parents for and against vaccines, state Department of Health officials and others meet for the first public airing of surgeon general Ladapo’s plan to repeal four mandates on school-entry vaccines now and bring about the repeal of seven others later.
Billed as a rule-development workshop, the first step in a long rulemaking process, the meeting is not expected to result in any voting. It is set for Friday morning at Hyatt Place in Panama City Beach (8 a.m. Eastern Time, 9 a.m. Central Time). Others may follow.
“People are confused. They don’t know what to do,” said Rana Alissa, a Jacksonville pediatrician and president of the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “We’re saying, fact-check.”
Noting the latest measles outbreak, the 47th this year, compared with 16 last year, according to federal data, Dr. Alissa bemoaned the backslide after vaccines nearly eradicated the disease in this country. Twenty-six percent of measles patients hospitalized this year were younger than 5.
"We were so close with the measles, to get rid of it," Alissa said, urging parents to stay the course with their children's vaccinations.
“They’re refusing more and more to take the vaccines. … It saddens me,” said Jennifer Takagishi, a Tampa pediatrician and vice president of the pediatric organization, which reports having 2,900 members in Florida.
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Dr. Takagishi said the growing number of parents declining the childhood vaccines that pediatricians recommend are being swayed by confusing and contradictory information. Among them: recent reversals by Kennedy appointees in longstanding pro-vaccine policy at the federal level, including dropping the Hepatitis B vaccine guidance for infants last Friday.
Also: rumors that aluminum adjuvants, an ingredient in many vaccines, may be unsafe, and Ladapo’s campaign against vaccine mandates in the name of parental rights. Dr. Ladapo equated vaccine mandates to “slavery.” Unlike many Florida physician organizations, he did not address the merits of community immunity bestowed by high vaccination rates.
Regarding aluminum adjuvants, Kennedy’s CDC vaccine-advisory panel decided last week to review decades of studies about their safety, suggesting some work deeming them questionable may have been overlooked. The American Academy of Pediatrics immediately denounced the move, citing decades of studies finding the tiny quantities of aluminum salts to be safe and to be great at amplifying the protective qualities of numerous vaccines.
Similarly, on Nov. 19, the CDC shocked the medical community by changing direction on whether vaccines may be linked to autism, long a bone of contention between pro- and anti-vaccine camps. The CDC announced through its website that not enough study had been done to rule out any connection. Prominent autism advocacy organizations, including the Autism Society, immediately denounced the claim, saying reputable scientific investigations have proved repeatedly there is no link between autism and vaccines.
With the nation’s premier public-health agency suddenly at odds with the nation’s major medical societies, parents not surprisingly are feeling confused.
With all that top of mind, the Florida pediatricians group, the Florida Academy of Family Physicians, and the Florida American College of Physicians are among the doctors working together to be a firewall against any weakening of school vaccine requirements. They say fewer vaccines will lead to more sickness and death from preventable diseases, that community immunity will deteriorate, and that science is on their side.
It was not apparent Wednesday which anti-vax-mandate organizations will testify Friday during the three-hour time slot. However, a nonprofit called Stand for Health Freedom published a call to action to submit written comments in support of the repeal.
And in Orlando in October, Ladapo appealed for support at the annual summit of Moms For Liberty, a national group founded in Florida that came to fame fighting COVID-19 school-mask mandates and calling for book bans. Moms For Liberty has a chapter in Bay County, where the vaccine workshop will be held.
Ladapo announced on Sept. 3, alongside Gov. Ron DeSantis and Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas, that he would work to eliminate every vaccine mandate in Florida to give parents freedom to send their children to school unvaccinated. He did not question the mandated vaccines’ safety or efficacy, and he said they would still be available for those who want them. DeSantis endorsed the idea.
Florida requires vaccinations against 11 diseases in order to attend public and private schools, child-care facilities and family daycare homes. Four of the vaccines, including one against Hib, which causes bacterial meningitis, are mandated by administrative rule. Those are the subjects of this rule-change workshop.
The other seven mandates, including vaccination against polio, are controlled in state law by the Florida Legislature. Ladapo says he wants to see those eliminated, too.
The Florida Academy of Family Physicians and the Florida American College of Physicians were among the first to request public hearings on Ladapo’s plan, and other groups are following suit. They and others want multiple hearings around the state, noting that holding this Friday’s workshop at a vacation town in northwest Florida during the holiday season is inconvenient. The workshop provides for written comments to be submitted but will not facilitate remote access.
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After filing notice on Sept. 3 that it would develop a rule repealing school vaccine mandates, the Department of Health on Nov. 26 began releasing released documents outlining its intentions. A key component is expansion of exemptions, now granted only for medical and religious reasons. The draft language would dramatically broaden qualifications for exemption by authorizing “ethical” objections -- as suggested at a Sept. 3 press conference by Ladapo and the education commissioner. Should school vaccine mandates remain intact, loosely defined “ethical” exemptions could undermine them anyway.
The draft language also aims to let Floridians opt out of registering their vaccination status in a database called Florida SHOTS. It would make tracking of vaccination data difficult, which is something DeSantis endorses in his “medical freedom” campaign.
'Nationally significant'
A national organization jumping into the fray is American Families for Vaccines, a nonprofit with 15 state chapters.
“We got involved in Florida because we see this as nationally significant,” said attorney Joseph Zamboni, director of the group’s legal arm. “If Florida removes these child vaccine requirements, it would be the first state to roll back these in this way, so it wouldn’t just affect Florida, it would set a precedent for what’s happening around the country.” All states mandate various vaccinations for school entry and offer various exemptions.
“We are involved because we believe Florida families deserve the same protections as every other state across the nation,” Zamboni said.
He and others said they also hope the workshop will air concerns that if Florida were to become a highly infected state, it would strain the state’s health care system and depress tourism, one of the state’s greatest economic engines.
“If Florida does very different things from the rest of the country in terms of vaccinations, is that going to be a factor?” he said. “Health economists, tourism economists could weigh in on that. That’s who I’ll be looking for.”
The four school-entry vaccines that could be removed from mandates by changing the administrative rules protect against Hib disease (which can cause bacterial meningitis), varicella (chickenpox), Hepatitis B (liver disease), and pneumococcal bacteria (which causes bacterial infections, including ear infections).
The seven set in state law and not subject to administrative action protect against: measles, mumps, and rubella (combined into one MMR shot); diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis (combined into a DTaP shot); and polio. Pertussis is whooping cough.
Orange County state Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith has introduced a bill to put all 11 vaccine mandates under state control.
Co-sponsored by Palm Beach County Sen. Lori Berman, leader of the Senate Democrats, the bill advanced Tuesday by being referred to three legislative committees for deliberations: Health Policy; Education Pre-K through grade 12; and Rules.
Without such important referrals, the bill would not have been considered.
The 2026 regular legislative session begins Jan. 13.
This article first appeared on Florida Trident and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
