• Slug: News–RFK Vaccines Fluoride. 1,000 words.
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By Madeline Bates
Cronkite News

WASHINGTON – Kindergartners are less likely to get vaccinations in Arizona than in almost any other state. And fewer than three in five state residents have access to fluoridated water – also well below the national average.

These metrics leave public health experts in Arizona especially concerned about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was grilled by senators Wednesday during the first day of his confirmation hearings for secretary of Health and Human Services.

For years, RFK Jr. has questioned the safety and effectiveness of childhood immunizations against measles, polio and other scourges that have mostly disappeared in the United States. And he wants to eliminate fluoridation of public water supplies, which dental experts believe would cause an epidemic of unnecessary cavities.

“It would be catastrophic if he gets in this job,” said Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, whose members include nurses, researchers and other health care professionals.

The group has urged its members to prod Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, both Democrats, to oppose the nomination. Both have expressed concerns about RFK’s views but neither has yet said how they’ll vote.

“His interest in people eating healthier is a positive thing, but that does not outweigh the issue that I and others have about his views on vaccinations,” Kelly told Cronkite News at the Capitol on Wednesday.

Statewide, 8.5% of Arizona kindergartners didn’t get at least one mandatory immunization, according to 2023-2024 school year data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only four states had higher noncompliance rates.

State health department data shows that just over 95% of Arizona kindergartners received all six state-mandated immunizations against polio, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, mumps, rubella and hepatitis B, chickenpox and meningitis.

Roughly one in 20 received none of those vaccines.

Opting out requires signing a Personal Exemption Form. Parents don’t have to provide any justification but must acknowledge that in case of an outbreak, their child would not be allowed in school or childcare.

Immunization rates vary widely within the state.

For polio, countywide rates in Arizona ranged from 76% in Greenlee County, with 161 kindergartners, to 90% in Maricopa County, which has 52,000 kindergartners, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services.

AZDHS considers 95% the target to provide herd immunity.

As for fluoride, CDC data shows Arizona ranked 37th among the states. Just over 57% of residents are served by public water supplies with fluoride levels sufficient to protect dental health – far below the 72% national average.

“I am going to advise the water districts about their legal liability … and I’m going to give them good information on the science, and fluoride will disappear,” he told MSNBC in November.

Experts view the addition of small amounts of fluoride to water as a major 20th century advance, calling it entirely safe at levels used in the United States.

The American Public Health Association is among the dozens of groups that publicly oppose RFK’s nomination. Social conservatives also criticize his support for abortion rights, including Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, who has led an anti-RFK ad campaign.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell – a polio survivor – fervently opposes the nomination.

“Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,” the former Senate GOP leader said last month.

Kennedy has long said that vaccines cause autism and more harm than the diseases they’re intended to prevent. The medical community views such assertions as baseless.

For much of his career, Kennedy chaired Children’s Health Defense, a group he founded in 2016 that spreads inaccurate warnings about vaccine safety. The website highlights stories from parents who claim their children were “vaccine injured.” It also mentions concerns about processed foods and other children’s health issues.

Dr. Marny Eulberg, a family physician in the Denver area – and polio survivor – said she would be alarmed if a vaccine skeptic took over at HHS.

Eulberg, a graduate of the University of Arizona medical school, has had a few patients over the years who refused the polio vaccine even after she explained the lifelong and devastating effects of the disease.

Polio is transmitted through feces, sneezes or coughs. It targets the brain and spinal cord and can cause paralysis and death. Dr. Jonas Salk discovered a safe and effective vaccine against polio in 1955 – an active virus given in a sugar cube. The vaccine in use today is an inactivated strain of the virus and is given through an injection.

Eulberg was diagnosed at age 4 and spent six months in the hospital. She still walks with a limp.

Such suffering is so easy to avoid thanks to vaccination, she said.

“If your child gets polio, I’m not going to be very nice to you,” said Eulberg.

Kennedy briefly ran for president last year as an independent, using the slogan “Make America Healthy Again.”

In October, after dropping out and throwing his support to Trump, he posted a video on his website saying, “I’m not going to take anyone’s vaccines away from them.

I just want to be sure every American knows the safety profile, the risk profile, and the efficacy of each vaccine. That’s it.”

He offered further assurances at his confirmation hearing at the Senate Finance Committee, saying, “I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine. I will not do anything as HHS secretary to stop that.”

Rather than being “anti-vaccine,” he told senators, “I am pro-safety. … I believe that vaccines play a critical role in health care. All of my kids are vaccinated.”

But Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, accused Kennedy of trying to mislead the public, reminding him that he has said he would not get his children vaccinated if he could do it over again.

Humble, for one, is concerned that RFK would cut funding for the Vaccines for Children program, created by Congress in 1993 after a measles epidemic.

Under the program, children who are underinsured or not insured get vaccines free. The CDC credits the program for preventing nearly 30 million hospitalizations and saving $2.2 trillion in health care costs.

For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.