“It really was either a flight or fight moment, and I felt I had one more fight in me.”
“As a state, in our legislation, we have all of our recommendations for vaccine tied to the ACIP process that is connected to CDC, which is the federal process. So we’re going to have to pull away from that.”
Those two moments — a personal decision to stay in the fight and a policy decision to pull away from federal vaccine rules — now define Dennis Worsham’s early tenure as Washington’s secretary of health.
Washington’s Department of Health is preparing legislation that would sever the state’s vaccine requirements from federal CDC and Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices guidelines. Worsham says the change is needed after recent federal rollbacks on childhood and COVID-19 immunizations. Under current law, Washington’s school and community vaccine standards automatically track federal recommendations. He argues that delinking would allow the state to set its own evidence-based standards and preserve insurance coverage for vaccines no longer recommended at the federal level, since many insurers rely on state statute to determine what must be covered.
The effort comes as Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii coordinate through the West Coast Health Alliance to reinforce what those states define as evidence-based standards and counter what Worsham describes as a period of confusion driven by shifting federal policy. Worsham said the department will pursue policy-only requests in the upcoming legislative session as it rebuilds after budget cuts. Rural vaccine access, PFAS contamination, bird flu monitoring and a new statewide measles exposure tracker remain ongoing concerns.