By By Sam Drysdale,State House News Service

Copyright berkshireeagle

BOSTON — State officials are prepared to issue guidance or a standing vaccination order for pharmacies covering several childhood vaccines, the top state public health official said Wednesday.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the Center for Disease Control is holding a meeting Thursday and Friday, where the panel is expected to vote on whether to change recommendations on vaccines against measles, mumps, rubella, COVID-19, hepatitis B and chickenpox.

Ahead of that meeting, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health issued its own guidance on COVID-19 vaccinations and earlier this month authorized pharmacists to administer the updated COVID booster to residents age 5 and older through a standing order.

At a Wednesday press conference, DPH Commissioner Robbie Goldstein said similar steps could be taken for other vaccines depending on the outcomes of the ACIP discussions.

“The Department of Public Health is going to review the recommendations that come out of the ACIP meeting, but we’ve already committed to making sure that we use the exact same process that we use for COVID — look at the data, work collaboratively with other states in the Northeast, look to professional societies, and put out evidence-based recommendations for those vaccines,” Goldstein said.

Thursday’s portion of the ACIP meeting focuses on hepatitis B and the MMRV vaccine — a single shot that protects children against measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (chickenpox). The committee will turn its attention to COVID-19 vaccinations on Friday.

Goldstein said he came to recommendations as an infectious disease physician and “someone who watched nearly every ACIP meeting throughout the COVID-19 pandemic” as a former adviser at the CDC.

Gov. Maura Healey echoed that message, saying the state remains committed to access and science-driven public health policies.

“Bottom line, in Massachusetts, if you want a vaccine, you’ll get a vaccine. This is true for flu and COVID vaccines. It’s also true of children’s vaccines, including measles and chickenpox,” Healey said. “And it’s true of every science-backed vaccine that our public health experts recommend, and it will stay that way.”

Under Healey, Massachusetts is moving to creating distance from federal vaccine guidance amid growing friction with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The shift marks a departure as the state asserts its own public health direction in response to changes at the federal level.

Earlier this summer, Kennedy dismissed all existing members of ACIP and appointed a new group.

The move drew criticism from Healey, who said Wednesday, “This is a panel that RFK Jr. recently purged of its entire expert membership and replaced with his own hand-picked people, many of whom share his anti-vaccine, anti-science views. We hope, nevertheless, that they do the right thing the next two days and follow the science.”

Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, has argued that federal agencies need reform and greater transparency. He has defended his appointments as part of an effort to challenge what he sees as entrenched pharmaceutical influence in public health policy.

At Wednesday’s press conference, a reporter asked Healey whether setting the state apart from federal standards could backfire under a future administration with different priorities.

“I didn’t start this. The federal government started this … because Donald Trump put a conspiracy theorist in charge of HHS,” she said, citing cuts to health care and firing top CDC officials as part of what she described as a broader dismantling of public health systems.