TIP Advocacy and Public Policy

Thanks to a generous donation from the St. David’s Community Health Foundation, TIP partnered with Frontera 501 to conduct town hall meetings during the spring and summer of 2008, for over 200 stakeholders in 8 cities across Texas, culminating in the 2008 Texas Immunization Summit. The summit was attended by over 150 stakeholders from across the state and included direct care providers, public health departments, parents and health advocacy groups. The stakeholders identified key immunization policy issues in their mission to keep Texas safe from vaccine preventable diseases. Based on this information, TIP and the St David’s Community Health Foundation published a guide to the primary issues in immunization policy in Texas,  Texans Speak Out: How to Improve Immunization Rates. As a direct result of this advocacy work, the Texas Immunization Coalition successfully passed the following legislation:

• SB 346 by Chairwoman Jane Nelson (R - Flower Mound):  Adults may now enter their information into the state immunization registry, ImmTrac.  This is a great tool for making sure that adults are up to date on their immunizations.  It will be particularly important if there is a pandemic flu vaccine.  Also very important for people entering health care professions, the military or college because all these people need their immunization records and previously the records were deleted out of the registry when a person turned 18 years old.
  

• SB 347 by Chairwoman Jane Nelson (R - Flower Mound):  Allows Texas to share information with other states if there is an emergency in Texas that forces Texans to surrounding states.  This is a great bill for disaster preparedness and for ensuring that critical vaccines are administered only to people who need them in an emergency.
  

• HB 4189 by Chairman Patrick Rose (D - Dripping Springs):  (also known as the Jamie Schanbaum Act) Effective January 2010, any student who is entering a dormitory for the first time must have the meningitis vaccine.  Quite simply, this bill will save many lives since meningitis is a very deadly disease that is prevalent in college age adults and has claimed the lives of many Texans in the last several years.

The Immunization Partnership wishes to thank all of our Capitol allies and supporters, particularly the following Legislators who helped champion this important legislation:

Senator Jane Nelson, Chair of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee

Senator Wendy Davis

Senator Leticia Van de Putte

Representative Patrick Rose, Chair of the House Human Services Committee

Representative Lois Kolkhorst, Chair of the House Public Health Committee

Representative Donna Howard