Former Tennessee vaccine chief says she was fired for efforts to vaccinate teens

(NewsNation Now) — Controversy at the Tennessee Department of Health after Dr. Michelle Fiscus, the top vaccine official there, says she was fired for her efforts to vaccinate people from the state, specifically teenagers.

“I wasn’t told why I was terminated from my position,” Fiscus said. “What I believe was the cause is that I had sent a memo out to our COVID-19 providers, telling them about a 34-year-old Tennessee Supreme Court case law that states that in Tennessee children ages 14 and older have the right to make their own medical decisions, without the consent of their parents, if their healthcare provider feels that they’re mature enough to make that decision.”

Fiscus says the memo was met with a lot of pushback from legislators.

“Some of whom actually asked that the Department of Health be dissolved, because they felt that we were undermining the authority of parents,” Fiscus said.

Fiscus doesn’t believe that’s the case.

“Sometimes teens are in state custody, or maybe they have a parent that’s incarcerated where they’re not able to provide consent,” Fiscus said. “It’s not so much an argument over whether or not they should have the right. The fact is they do have the right in Tennessee.”

As part of the pushback, Fiscus says the department of health pulled back adolescent COVID-19 vaccination efforts as well as all vaccination efforts for children.

“They were canceling school based vaccination clinics and back to school,” Fiscus said. “They were canceling flu vaccination clinics that were going to be scheduled for the fall. Even went so far as to say that we couldn’t even recognize that August is National Immunization Awareness Month.”

The Tennessee Department of Health has since reinstated those programs.

NewsNation also reached out for a comment about Dr. Fiscus’ departure. The Department of Health said they will not comment further on personal matters.

“I want to be sure to emphasize that this is not local public health that is on the wrong side of this,” Fiscus said. “This is the leadership and elected officials in the state that is allowing politics to get in the way of the work that those local public health workers are trying to do to protect Tennesseans and those folks are the heroes.”

The state of Tennessee is a growing hotspot in the US for COVID-19 with cases rising to levels not seen since April. Just 38.9 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, one of the lowest rates in the nation.