Louisiana Department of Health says it will no longer promote mass vaccination

By CNN Newsource

Published February 13, 2025 5:08 PM

By Meg Tirrell, CNN

(CNN) — The Louisiana Department of Health will no longer promote mass vaccination, the state’s surgeon general, Dr. Ralph Abraham, told state health workers Thursday.

“The State of Louisiana and LDH have historically promoted vaccines for vaccine preventable illnesses through our parish health units, community health fairs, partnerships and media campaigns,” Abraham wrote in a memo addressed to “LDH Team Members” and obtained by CNN. “While we encourage each patient to discuss the risks and benefits of vaccination with their provider, LDH will no longer promote mass vaccination.”

The directive, first reported by the Times-Picayune, came the same day anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services. It was timing that Dr. Jennifer Avegno, director of the Health Department for the City of New Orleans, said she didn’t think was a coincidence.

“Now they have, in the ultimate health authority in America, someone who has been a champion of the same falsehoods that have been promulgated locally,” Avegno told CNN. “During his Senate confirmation hearings, [Kennedy] was given opportunities to walk back his stances on vaccines, and he really didn’t take them. … I think it gives folks who, for whatever reason, are in his way of thinking license to proceed.”

Avegno said New Orleans has an independent health department and isn’t subject to the state’s directive, and “we will not be abiding.”

“When you deprioritize, when you create confusion and doubt to any kind of medical information, then the fact is that folks don’t get it,” she said. “We’re already seeing that; our childhood vaccination rate has dropped in the last year or so, like many other states in the country.

“When vaccination rates drop,” Avegno said, “you get worse outbreaks.”

Louisiana has been struck particularly hard by flu amid a severe season for the whole country, Avegno said.

The state’s vaccination rates against flu are especially low and declining. Among children, 11% had been vaccinated against flu in December, down from 14% at the same time two years previously, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Numbers are slightly higher for adults: 17% in 2024, down from 20% in 2022. The national rates are closer to 40% for kids and adults.

In his memo, Abraham told state health workers that “vaccines should be treated with nuance, recognizing differences between seasonal vaccines and childhood immunizations, which are an important part of providing immunity to our children.”

He said parish health units, or PHUs, will continue to stock and provide vaccines, and people who want vaccinations or who have questions about them “are encouraged to visit their local PHU.”

But Avegno said the state’s stance, previously not communicated publicly, has already dealt a blow. Each fall, she said, she and her team start communicating with state health colleagues to plan mass vaccination events for the fall and winter respiratory season.

“We vaccinate hundreds and hundreds of people at these events in any given year,” Avegno said.

Last year, she realized something was amiss when she wasn’t hearing back from state health counterparts come September. New Orleans Public Radio reported in December that the state health department had communicated internally a policy to stop promoting Covid-19, influenza and mpox vaccines – but told employees the policy wouldn’t be put in writing.

New Orleans’ health department is holding its own events and has ramped up communications, Avegno said, trying also to make clear that people can get many vaccines at no cost at pharmacies if they have private insurance, Medicare or Medicaid – and that there are still resources for those who are uninsured or who otherwise depend on public health departments.

“It’s got to be more than just the little public health departments trying to punch above their weight,” though, Avegno said. She said hospitals and major health-care systems, schools, universities and medical associations need to promote vaccination to keep people safe.

Abraham also posted a letter Thursday on the state health department’s website, criticizing the public health response to the Covid-19 pandemic and calling vaccine mandates during the pandemic “an offense against personal autonomy that will take years to overcome.”

The new directive from Louisiana’s health department is essentially telling residents “you’re on your own,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “The outcome of that is going to be frayed immunization rates and more disease.”