Issue
Number 323
July 9, 2002
CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE
- Action needed within
a week: Call your Senators for signature on
immunization appropriations letter
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July 9, 2002
ACTION NEEDED WITHIN A WEEK: CALL YOUR SENATORS FOR
SIGNATURE ON IMMUNIZATION APPROPRIATIONS LETTER
If the above IAC DOUBLE EXPRESS headline looks familiar,
perhaps you recall our push in April to
persuade Congress members to sign a letter to the
House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor,
Health and Human Services, and Education
requesting a $65 million immunization funding
increase for the fiscal year 2003 (see IAC EXPRESS
#308 at
http://www.immunize.org/genr.d/issue308.htm). All of
your efforts made a difference, resulting
in many more signature commitments than had
existed on the day before
you received the IAC DOUBLE EXPRESS action plea.
Now it's time to contact our Senators. We need to convince
our Senators to sign a similar letter of
support to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee
on Labor, Health and Human Services, and
Education for a total of $65 million in
increased funding: $20 million for immunization
infrastructure building and $45 million for
vaccine purchase. Signatures on the letter are due
by Wednesday, July 17.
After witnessing critical vaccine shortages and watching
some vaccine prices rise dramatically, we all know that
more and more children in this country will be
undervaccinated unless more dollars are
allocated for state vaccine purchase grants
and other components of our national immunization
program.
A phone call or email message to your Senators at this
time could add more signatures to the
appropriations increase letter, which could tip
the balance of Subcommittee votes so that this
issue reaches the full
Senate Appropriations Committee and becomes written into a
bill in the fall.
Senators Jack Reed (RI), James Jeffords (VT), Richard J.
Durbin (IL), and Gordon Smith (OR) wrote
the following letter to Senator Tom Harkin
(IA), Chair, and Senator Arlen Specter (PA),
Ranking Member, of the Senate Appropriations
Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and
Education. It is this letter that all Senators are invited
to sign by Wednesday, July 17. Your state's
Senators may be more likely to sign the letter if
they know that you, their health care
constituents, care deeply about
immunizing our nation's children.
As of this writing, only six other Senators have signed
this letter: Senator Maria Cantwell (WA), Senator
Blanche Lincoln (AR), Senator Barbara
Mikulski (MD), Senator Patti Murray (WA), Senator
Jean Carnahan (MO), and Senator Paul
Wellstone (MN). If one or both of your Senators are not
among those signers, your phone call or
email message could convince him or her to "get on
board."
All you need to do is simply ask your Senators to join
their colleagues on the signature list by July 17.
(The actual signing occurs at a later
date.) Inform them that to join the list, they can
contact Lisa German Foster in
Sen. Reed's office at (202) 224-4642. Of course, if you
have time to provide more information about
why this increase is important to you, or to
discuss stories from your practice
involving immunization access, that would
further strengthen the case.
The letter to Senate Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman
Harkin and Ranking Member Specter, which
your Senators may sign at your urging, reads as
follows:
*******************************
July 17, 2002
Dear Chairman Harkin and Ranking Member Specter:
We greatly appreciate your continued leadership and
support for the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention's (CDC) national immunization program. The
campaign to ensure that every child receives
the full compliment of recommended
immunizations is a critical part of our continued
efforts to protect public health. As you
know, the President's fiscal year 2003 budget request
proposes level funding for
immunization activities. If we are to maintain
record high immunization coverage levels in light
of recent nationwide shortages of critical
vaccines and the added expense of new vaccines, additional
funding for FY03 is essential.
Specifically, we would request an increase of $20
million for immunization delivery
(operations/infrastructure) and $45 million for
state vaccine purchase grants over last year.
Congress has made great strides in addressing the
instability in the Section 317 immunization program
by providing substantial funding increases
for state infrastructure grants. As you are well
aware, states use
these funds to conduct outreach and education of parents
and providers about new vaccines, develop
and implement state-based immunization registries
to reach children in medically underserved
areas. An increase of $20 million for these
activities would be consistent with the
recommendations in the Institute of Medicine (IOM)
report, "Calling the Shots".
CDC vaccine purchase grants enable states to buy vaccines
for disadvantaged children in a timely
manner and to avoid missed opportunities when no
other coverage is available to support
immunization services. However, states are
grappling with prolonged shortages of several critical
childhood vaccines. In addition, new
vaccines and new combination vaccines continue to
drive up the overall cost of
immunizing a child. Today, the cost to fully immunize a
child, at federally-negotiated discount prices, is
$400.82, with almost half of that cost resulting from the
newly recommended pneumococcal conjugate
vaccine (PCV).
To ensure that states have adequate vaccine supplies when
shortages abate and to help states keep up
with escalating vaccine purchase costs, we would
urge you to include an increase of $45 million
over last year for vaccine
purchase.
We hope we can count on your continued support for the
ongoing campaign to advance the health of
our nation by protecting the 11,000 babies who are
born each day in this country from the ravages of
vaccine-preventable disease.
[Signatures]
*******************************
Following are two ways you can find and contact your
Senators. Bear in mind that phone calls are more
immediate than emails and may be preferable
when time is of the essence; emails can get
delayed on a server for hours
and/or remain in a recipient's inbox for days.
- Call the United States Capitol Operator
(available 24 hours) at (202) 224-3121. The
operator will connect you
with your Senator's Washington office. If you don't know
your Senator's name, just tell the
operator what state you live in, and he or she
will tell you the Senator's name and proceed
to connect you.
- Go to:
http://www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_state.cfm
and click on the Senator's name(s) to
go directly to their websites, which usually
contain contact information.
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