How Wisconsin turned around its lagging vaccination program

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Sun, 2021-04-04 20:23 — mike kraft

How Wisconsin turned around its lagging vaccination program — and buoyed a Biden health pick Andrea Palm, tapped as No. 2 at HHS, has been vilified by Wisconsin Republicans. But her state’s approach to covid-19 vaccinations is working. Isaac Stanley-Becker, Dan Diamond Washington Post

When President Biden announced in January that he would make Wisconsin’s top health official his No. 2 at the Department of Health and Human Services, the state seemed like a poor model for the nation’s most crucial public health priority: fighting the pandemic.

Wisconsin had just come through a surge more intense than New York City’s, and it ranked near the bottom of states in bringing a first dose of vaccine to its residents. Only about a third of doses sent to the state had been administered. The grim numbers galvanized Republicans in Wisconsin to take aim at a familiar target, state health secretary-designate Andrea Palm, whom they had refused to confirm since 2019, denying her symbolic authority even as the coronavirus gripped the state. ...

Two months later, Wisconsin is among the states leading the immunization race. It maintains one of the fastest rates of vaccination, having administered 90 percent of doses delivered as of Saturday. It has found success especially in convincing residents to complete the two-dose series recommended for shots developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. And it has not seen the kind of disparities between urban and rural communities plaguing other states.

Wisconsin offers lessons for the nation that go beyond its approach to coronavirus vaccinations. The state also shows how expertise can win out in spite of partisanship — a lesson Palm, a veteran of the Obama administration, will likely carry with her back to Washington. If confirmed by the Senate, she will help steer federal health policy during a period of intense polarization. Unlike in Wisconsin, however, Democrats have legislative majorities, at least for now.

interviews with state and county officials, medical providers and other health-care leaders suggest the more meticulous measures governing the parceling out of vaccine — and put into place under Palm’s leadership — caused initial delays but are now bearing fruit.

The state adhered more rigidly than did others to a tiering system that steered shots to the most vulnerable. This caused frustration as other states threw open the floodgates, but now 63 percent of people 65 and older are fully vaccinated, compared to 55 percent nationwide. “Early on it looked like maybe we had been too elegant with the categories,” said Azita Hamedani, the chair of emergency medicine at UW Health who led the state’s prioritization committee. ...

Gradually, more flexibility was introduced. When leaders in Milwaukee identified stark racial disparities in the city’s vaccinations, they won state approval to open up eligibility to anyone 16 and over in 10 Zip codes, said Kirsten Johnson, the city’s health commissioner. ...

The state focused from the outset on activating a large number of public and private health-care providers, rather than relying on locations that could handle a high volume of shots. This compounded initial uncertainty about supply, but now residents have more options about where to seek out immunizations. ...

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