HONOLULU - Four years and more than a quarter of a million immunizations later, the successful Stop
Flu at School program faces an uncertain future due to shrinking state and federal dollars.
Currently the program only has enough funds for the 2011-2012 school year, which begins August 1.
“This is a huge positive and it might be just wiped away,” said Dr. Sarah Park, state epidemiologist and chief of the Department of Health’s Disease Outbreak and Control Division.
Since its inception in 2008 the program has immunized 267,824 kids against influenza at public and private schools, most of them in grades K through 8. The initiative also helped stem the tide of the H1N1 pandemic in Hawaii in 2009.
On average, 337.5 schools took part in the program each school year, with participation rates among students at 45.5 percent. In addition 38,155 faculty and staff were also vaccinated during all four school years.
With that kind of success democratic Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz is doing all he can to ensure the program lives on. Schatz has scheduled a meeting with private insurance companies this Friday where he’ll ask for financial help in keeping the initiative afloat.
“We're really open to any kind of partnership where everybody is paying a little bit for a critically important thing,” said the lieutenant governor. “If we take no action then the program will simply run out of funds.”
Kaiser Permanente spokeswoman Laura Lott confirmed the health maintenance organization had been invited to hear Schatz plead his case.
HMSA, the largest provider of health care coverage in Hawaii, did not confirm whether it too would hear the lieutenant governor make his pitch, but it’s unlikely the meeting would take place without HMSA’s participation.
MAKING A CASE
Since nearly two-thirds of children who participated in the flu vaccination program this school year are covered by private insurers, Schatz believes it makes sense for the state to recover some of its upfront expenditures, which minus federal dollars has averaged $675,000.
“If these children were to go back into the private pay universe they'd overwhelm doctors' offices,” said Schatz.
“It'd be tons of paperwork and probably fewer kids would get immunized, meaning more kids get sick, meaning more kids would go to the hospital and that's going to cost the system more money in the long run.”
If private insurers like Kaiser and HMSA agree to cover the cost of immunizing their members at public and private schools, the state would still need to secure funds for one-third of the remaining children, most of which are covered by Medicaid.
Schatz believes a likely source for funds would be the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or perhaps the state Health Department.
“We gotta make this program work,” he said.
ECONOMIC IMPACT OF FLU SHOTS
While there have been no local studies on the impact the school vaccination program may have had on Hawaii’s economy, Dr. Park is firm believer flu shots increase productivity.
“Imagine anytime a kid is out from school, parents have to take off or they have to find some alternate care for the child at home,” she said. “It's savings in terms of work hours and financial costs to the parents.”
“This flu shot program helps everybody,” added Schatz. “It helps the public education system, it helps the private education system (and) it helps our economy.”
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