As vaccines for children stall, appeals aimed at wary parents
Kemika Cosey with her children, Zurie, left, and Zamir, students at Garrison Elementary School in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. Erin Schaff/The New York Times
By Jan Hoffman The New York Times
For weeks, the school principal had been imploring Kemika Cosey: Would she please allow her children, ages 7 and 11, to get COVID-19 shots?
Cosey remained firm. A hard no.
But “Mr. Kip” — Brigham Kiplinger, principal of Garrison Elementary School in Washington, D.C. — swatted away the “no.”
Since the federal government authorized the coronavirus vaccine for children ages 5-11 nearly three months ago, Kiplinger has been calling the school’s parents, texting, nagging and cajoling daily. Acting as a vaccine advocate has become central to his role as an educator.
Largely through Kiplinger’s skill as a parent vax whisperer, Garrison Elementary has turned into a public health anomaly: Of the 250 Garrison Wildcats in kindergarten through fifth grade, 80% have had at least one shot, he said.
But as the omicron variant has stormed through U.S. classrooms the rate of vaccination overall for America’s 28 million children ages 5-11 remains even lower than health experts had feared. According to a new analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation based on federal data, only 18.8% are fully vaccinated and 28.1% have received one dose.
“It’s going to be a long slog at this point to get the kids vaccinated,” said Jennifer Kates, a senior vice president at Kaiser who specializes in global health policy. She says it will take unwavering persistence like that of Kiplinger, whom she knows firsthand because her child attends his school. “It’s hard, hard work to reach parents.”
After the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was authorized for younger children in late October, the out-of-the-gate surge in demand lasted a scant few weeks.
“I was surprised at how quickly the interest in the vaccine for kids petered out,” Kates said. “Even parents who had been vaccinated themselves were more cautious about getting their kids vaccinated.”
Public health officials say that persuading parents to get their younger children vaccinated is crucial not only to sustaining in-person education but also to containing the pandemic overall. Unvaccinated elementary school children remain a large, turbulent source of spread. Traveling to and from school on buses, traversing school hallways, bathrooms, classrooms and gyms, they can unknowingly act as viral vectors countless times a day.
Despite the proliferation of COVID-crowded hospitals, sick children and the highly contagious aspect of omicron, many parents do not believe the virus is dangerous enough to warrant risking their child’s health on a novel vaccine.
Health communication experts additionally blame that view on the early muddled messaging around omicron, which was initially described as “mild” but also as a variant that could pierce a vaccine’s protection. Many parents interpreted those messages to mean that the shots served little purpose. In fact, the vaccines have been shown to strongly protect against severe illness and death, although they are not as effective in preventing infections with omicron as with other variants.
Cosey, the Garrison parent who staunchly resisted Kiplinger’s entreaties for weeks, had worried that the vaccine could exacerbate her son’s many allergies. “It took me a little minute to do a lot more research,” she said.
Then, last month, she took both children to a school clinic. Yes, her pediatrician had encouraged her, but she also gives credit to Kiplinger.
At the school’s clinic, “Mr. Kip took a million pictures,” she added. “He was just superexcited that I decided to come in.”
Kiplinger is determined to convert the remaining vaccine holdouts at Garrison. At the most recent vaccine clinic, he stood by as a mother argued over the phone with her husband. “The mom and her four Wildcats wanted the shots, but for the dad it was a ‘no.’ It broke my heart,” he said.
“But we have another clinic coming up soon,” he added, “and I’m hoping that maybe he’ll come around.”
