 Okay, I'm Marcia's joiner and we are navigating the journey and you know that you've been with us that our navigating the journey is about you respecting your wishes and desires of how you want to choose to live your life from beginning to end. Well today we are going to talk about measles. Now when I was a child everybody had a measleshot a vaccination in fact I still have this car and then we thought it was over we thought that measles had disappeared from the face of the earth and now it's back because some people don't want to vaccinate their children. So today we're going to talk to Ken Farm who is a chair and neighborhood board 15 Kalihi Palama about he's been leading the charge to get everybody vaccinated. So Ken, hi. Hi Marcia, how are you? I like the shirt. Thank you. I like your shirt. It looks great. Tell us about how you got started with this push to get everybody vaccinated everybody in the schools in Hawaii. Well you know I mean I can't take as in terms of personal you know as not necessarily responsibility but ownership over that I'm just adding to what was already there. You know one of the things that I try to do and focus on is if there's going to be a public policy that we're going to have to make decisions upon I think it's very important that we see what the scholarship says in terms of the academic literature and studies before to really have an understanding and cultivate that knowledge based upon what we want to make our decisions based upon and sometimes you know emotional in sway can sometimes have an effect on people where they you know they're biased toward one way or another but you know if we let the academic literature speak for itself what the experts have said and what research has so far determined that we can see that vaccinations are is a very safe mechanism toward making sure that there are things that you mentioned before when you were a kid that were pervasive and wide spreading are no longer a part of this population and that is one of those things that I think is very important that we need to you know bring back again there's some people who really feel strongly that vaccinations are bad and that you know they should it's a matter of personal choice as opposed to public policy and protecting the community so I think that that's a very distinguishing mark with that there's places like in New York and California where they've taken the I believe it was the county council took very strong actions toward making sure that populations got vaccinated even though it was something that was you know regarding their religious belief system it but the larger point was protecting the entire population and I know that's very controversial for a lot of people but that is where we're at right now well speaking of religious preference I understand that certain religions don't believe in vaccination however it's been proven that they're safe that they're not going to hurt the child but do your does your religion have a right to impose your religion on my child that is if your child does not get vaccinated and all of the other children do and then you bring in the measles well at what point is your responsibility and the other kids in the class and I guess I'm stumbling on this but there there comes a time when we have to look at the rights of all of the children and not just one you know marcia I think one of the important parts too is we have to obviously separate you know what is you know being done at the public school level and public charter schools are supposed to private schools you know even places like Kamehameha schools has made sure that the students you know that they have under their care are vaccinated and they have very high rates of vaccination in comparison to other types of private schools and charter schools that are not within those realms of the public school realm for the public schools I'm sorry as private schools however in the public schools that is something where we have a law which dictates that before a student can go to public school that they must be vaccinated obviously there's people who you know because of allergies because of some of the a abuse cut it's an ovean type of thing that is used as part of the vaccinations that they're unable to because they're allergic to eggs that's a very small part of the population in comparison to those who it would just more matter of our religious viewpoints or we'd rather not and the more that we have those types of cases the more we lose what's called herd immunity and that's where people because we have so many people who are vaccinated the others who aren't able to be vaccinated are protected the more that that number is decreased the greater the chances are that the persons who aren't vaccinated because of those allergies are susceptible to you know what the vaccinations are protecting from but I'd also like to add Marsha that when it comes to vaccinations you know nothing is ever or just anything even in medical it's nothing that is ever just an absolute proven or it's always going to be 100% safe there's always a a danger with anything for example if someone's having a surgery there is a danger that there'll be some complications however you know we all have to do that I mean when it comes to walking on the street for example there's there's a risk of walking on the street there's a risk of driving in a car and we weigh those risks in terms of the out you know the outcomes of which we're looking for and in this case you know with parents a parents you know would hopefully want to do what's best for their kids obviously there's some risks that's involved with vaccinations but that is the what could happen if you don't vaccinate is far worse and furthermore there is less of a chance of things happening if you vaccinate than the alternative well in those big cities where we read about the measles epidemic outbreak we've been fortunate considering that the state has only tested 30 state 30 schools out of the hundreds of schools we have so we've been really fortunate however with the transit population the number of tourists that come every day how do we know that one of them you know unintentional of course one of them has measles how do we know that we're protected or do we know yeah I think that's a very valid point Marsha about asking you know how do we know I don't think we can really know for sure and I think that question could be addressed at the Department of Health but I think the other part too is what can we do to protect our population here if we have a transit population that's going from Hawaii or you know as part of tourism or just traveling through to the other parts of the continent that's very different we can protect our population here and we can do so just like what we did with the TB vaccinations of before there were trucks that were going to schools and just and vaccinating students and staff I believe that was if you go to I believe it was Lonnie Keelah Health Center they still have the TB control center it's over there you can see the pictures of the old fans that said Department of Health and they made sure that people were vaccinated to protect them from there but again it's it's the education is there for it and I think that there needs to be more of an outreach to show people you know like with anything there's always a danger however there's a greater danger of not having your kids vaccinated as well as themselves to let the alternatives could now when uh who pays for the vaccination if this this law says you have to do it who pays for the vaccination if I take my grandchild great grand now to be vaccinated do I pay for it does my insurance pay for it how does what happens and then when especially when the state demands that you do this who pays for that well I think it you know every person it depends so for example I would suggest that that question be deferred to the Department of Health they have the TB control branch because I believe that's one of the things that need to be have excuse me before a person goes into public school or even working with students so there is a website I think that I know the law says they have to the law says you have to accept for medical for religious reasons but um again since it's mandated my question is do we as taxpayers pay for that or does every parent pay for that's that's my question since it is mandated Marsha I think like it's like seatbelts it's like it's like seatbelts you know the resistance to seatbelts and to helmets and yet it's proven that they save lives so are we at the same place now with with measles you know Marsha do the answer your first question um it as mentioned before it would depend on the coverage of the individual halves in their insurance if somebody for example has quests I think that that might be covered in comparison to someone who has like a a PPO or something like that where there might be a co-pay however that question is better addressed talking to you know the person if they're working I think that would be an HR question that they could ask but also you know referring to the Department of Health that information is readily available if you go on to just Google Department of Health Hawaii and vaccinations I think it will take you to the TB control branch or one of those that can answer that question because everyone's circumstances are different do you know how it got started that some people are afraid of vaccination do you do you have any clue how that got started especially since it had all been but wiped out and now it's back do you know have any clue as to how this fear of vaccination started do you have any idea about that so one of the best examples we have was actually a English doctor that wrote a a study that was in what's called the Lancet Lancet is one of the most pronounced and well known in the medical industry and sciences that if you had a journal that was published there then it's you know you've made a name for yourself however this study that was there linked it to autism and it kind of went from there I'm sure there were other things but that was one of the most predominant ones the name of that doctor escapes me I believe his name was Andrew I could be wrong about that but there was a study that was conducted and it had to be from then it had to be retracted but the the narrative was out there and people took that and you know there was a term in research called confirmation bias so they agreed amongst themselves and now we're having this issue with that and other things where people are seeing that you know this is a way of making money for the pharmaceutical industry I believe that it is making money for them but I think it's making money to them by the tune about two to three percent in comparison to everything else that they're doing so you know getting back to the point about vaccinations and why it's important is because like you say with the transit population and we have students just like it had in New York you had one student that was there and because that student wasn't vaccinated affected over 500 persons and students would you now back to this autism thing was it ever proven that it didn't cause autism what's you know we know in terms of the methodology of the study that I'm aware of that you know first off you cannot infer a causality on a correlation so to say that it was a correlation there is a strong relationship however it was the way the study was done and what was left in what was left out and to my knowledge as it has been shown that that study from that doctor was retracted from the Lancet so so does that infer that that the vaccination did not cause autism is that am I doing for like I said I think I think what you're trying to do is you're trying to make a causal remark where you're saying that it either it caused it or it didn't cause it all we can do is have you know the data suggests this and a strong relationship or not or not having a strong relationship we also have to look at how the study was conducted so I think that's what the Lancet did in in regards to that individual that doctor who is as far as I also understand is no longer a doctor in Britain I believe that license was revoked so I think we are getting into the weeds about this but I can give you other information as part of that I'm just wondering if it was disproved because there's so many children that have autism and is it because we are the science has gotten so advanced that they're understanding autism better now than they used to and it the children are surviving much better they're doing all of these things so my question I guess is is was it ever disproved was it ever taken away that no autism is something totally different that's I guess that's what I'm asking I think that the other studies that have been therefore conducted has shown that there is little relationship in fact there was less of the relationship from before was as was suggested by the doctor who published in the Lancet said there was a strong relationship between autism and vaccinations however studies that have been conducted now has shown that there is no relationship between or a very small relationship in between again we cannot make causal remarks on a correlation study so that's just how research is we can't say it proves this or it doesn't prove that we can say there's a strong relationship the data suggests this they're you know based upon the data that was taken but we can never make a causal causal type of remark I'm just wondering if I how I would feel if one of my children or grandchildren had autism I'm thank god all of mine are are healthy but I'm just wondering how I would feel with this question mark did this really have something to do with this child being autistic or is there something else I that's where I'm coming from what is there's possibility that autism is called by something else other than vaccinations and does that mean all vaccinations or just chicken thoughts so there's various types of vaccinations marsha marsha so I think you know it's just what I'm trying to do here is just get the outreach that there is information out there that comes from the Department of Health I know that Dr. Park has done a very good job of trying to get that out and also you know this isn't something that's just for someone to just kind of figure out on their own there are resources that you can ask that are good incredible I would recommend people going to the Department of Health website under vaccines and to go from themselves I know that there are sometimes they try to put on presentations and I think that they're going to put more of an outreach because of the fact that there is this strong movement toward not having vaccinated their parents not having their kids vaccinated but what does that actually mean from the policy standpoint so like we were mentioning about herd immunity and really talking about things like that but you said that before you said that before herd immunity what is herd immunity so what herd immunity is is where you have the larger population that is vaccinated to cover if you will for those other individuals who are not able to become vaccinated so those are those individuals who have you know eggs they're allergic to eggs or any of the other types of um types of ingredients that are used in vaccinations so because of that herd immunity or those people who are vaccinated around them it protects those individuals the lore of the population that is being vaccinated the greater the chance that a herd immunity goes away I can't recall the percentage of what is needed and required for the population to have for it to be effective in terms of herd immunity and again I would defer back to the Department of Health because they have some really good information and as a parent if some of you're concerned with I would advise you to go to the Department of Health website and talk to somebody from there and if so there is Dr. Park and I'm sure that they'll be willing to give a presentation either a neighborhood board or other types of community activity or issue that goes on so there's a larger amount of people that can ask those questions and really have it addressed from a scientific standpoint well when we talked about the herd immunity and you mentioned one student in New York well you think of the millions of people in New York and one person shows up and now they've got an epidemic so okay go ahead so what happened when New York was there was a school there was a a school I believe was a Hasidic Jews that were against vaccination so the entire student body that was there were not vaccinated so when the student had contracted I believe it was measles then it just went across the entire school because of the fact that every person in the school was not vaccinated and then it was okay so they didn't they were not they did not have the herd no they did not have the herd immunization no they did not they did not because of that it just it spread out to the entire school so right so I mean imagine you know as you know if there maybe for example I believe the student traveled I believe it was to Israel or some other place that and then came back home and these other students who didn't have vaccinations because it was against their I guess religious creed or so and that's the kind of questions that we're going to have to ask especially when it comes on a policy side is does that outweigh protecting the population and in this case you know in New York and as well as other places in California they've said that no we're going to impose heavy fines on individuals who choose not to it is a touchy subject this isn't something that people are going to like saying but you know we look at public policy public policies for everyone and if we can find ways to protect the population then we must move toward that and as long and also too is we have the body of evidence to suggest strong evidence to suggest that yes vaccinations though they do have a very small case of things that could possibly happen it therefore outweighs other types of things that can happen such as measles mumps and rubella so you know it is therefore encouraged that you do become vaccinated well yes and I guess we should be blessed that here in Hawaii we have the herd immunization and so feeling fairly protected given the 10,000 new visitors that arrive every day and if you said it only took one then I guess we need to feel fairly comfortable I think you I think you can feel comfortable we shouldn't be complacent and I think that's something you know when it you know there's for example you mentioned the sample about the different schools right and so there were only 30 schools that were and I you know that in terms of the sample size but areas like Kauai for example there are large cases of non-vaccination of the students that are going to public charter schools and private schools and those could become areas and vectors board of people having you know contracting measles or whatnot so those are the kind of questions we have Kauai so Kauai is the Kauai is one of the uh I hate to say the word purveyors but one of the largest populations that do not have vaccinations and it could be because of some of the people there it could be the mindset but that again that's why we have to have that information out there and really have that outreach as to why Marsha I think you mentioned before too that you know that people would become vaccinated and I think there's another part of it where people forgot what it was like before vaccinations or the things that were contracted before one of the things that come to mind is polio and you know one of the I've talked to the older individuals where they're when they had their kids before the worst thing that they thought about was oh my goodness their kids gonna have polio you know polio and oh yeah you know we still have people who are in iron lungs we don't have that anymore as far as my understanding is but there's still people who live in iron lungs and that's because they contracted polio and part of the reason they contracted polios because they couldn't they didn't have the vaccinations and um yeah as a child uh that was before the polio vaccination but oh my gosh uh the president FDR had polio and it was a constant reminder of what polio could be and there were all kinds of stories that you don't go swimming and you don't do this and you don't do that because they didn't know where polio came from so uh today when we have Dr. Jonas won a peace prize for his discovery of the vaccine so now that we have all of this data and we have all of this and we have been in America almost totally free when I was a child everybody had open cough they didn't call it open cough now it's uh they give it a different pretty name but I can remember oh my gosh the children's suffering so with this cough it was and it was pink when it came up and it was years before I would do pepto-bismol because I had this memory of these children and open cough so we have come so far in protecting our population it it troubles me to think that we are regressing and hopefully that your um advocacy will make a difference will keep us protected let me put it that way well I mean you know it's it's advocacy but it's it's not in terms of a full-time thing this is something that I think we just you know I strongly believe in because for example you're mentioning a place like Kalihi a very transient population and you know there's a program for example for hepatitis and getting the vaccine for that that is a statewide program that the state does in order to especially with different populations coming from areas in the pacific that has not had the vaccine and become protected by that so measures like that are very good about protecting the population that we have furthermore it's you know in terms of the science the science has therefore declared that this is something that is safe it is safe in anything there's always going to be a possibility for a complication but for the most part this is a safe way of protecting a person as an individual their family because nature always isn't is not always nice to humans and as mentioned before there are many things before for example small pox small pox did a number on a population prior before and then there was I believe there's a UN directive that basically didn't matter who you are what you were they were going to vaccinate every single person on the earth and I believe that they did they did so with everyone that they could and for the most part aside from you know some laboratories small pox has been eradicated but I can just imagine what it would be like if we would have had the narrative now about how things are unsafe and the nature of things like small pox going through a population so again it's good to have good information out there it's good to know information that can be trusted I encourage people to go to the Department of Health website and also if you you know there's a number they can call as well you find out the real facts there's also some flyers there again it's not something where everything is going to be a hundred percent safe there's even when it comes to other types of convocation for example if you take a medication there's side effects and that affects a certain amount of the population so again you ask yourself the question is it something that you know with a possible cost outweigh the benefits of something like this but have the information first yeah now what can we do as ordinary people to assist you in your drive your adversaries to get this message out so that people aren't afraid because that's fear is terrible so how do we get rid of the fear so their parents are comfortable with having the children vaccinated how do we what do we do you know fear is a is a terrible motivator yet it is a motivator one of the things that I think that we should do is we should have more of those outreach from the Department of Health of the communities and the reason I say that is because people will go online and they will read something they'll google something and thought that they've conducted their research and that's why I say is you know it's it's important to go to these types of things like the Department of Health and ask those questions because from there that is you know are and in terms of our state that is where you know everything that matter you know that comes under the framework of health and safety it falls under the Department of Health especially when it comes to people's health as mentioned before so I think that that is a very a good way of doing it another way of looking at it too is if somebody's telling you something don't always believe it if it just it came from Google things can be changed so again it's where you get your information from and don't be afraid to ask questions and you know even if a person has friends who are not you know too keen on vaccinating find out the information for yourself but also seek out good uh sources of information when when making this so yeah so you're the number one source you're saying well we could start with the health department is that is that what you're saying I think it would start with the health department because that's where a lot of the you know that's where it comes from in terms of vaccinations so again there's Dr. Park who is a strong advocate for vaccinations far before I was that looks at this and also there is you know the research for which they use to determine their positions on and especially in and what you said your neighborhood Kalihi Palama where you have youngsters children from everywhere all the islands in the Pacific from Asia the mainland with all of these different places I would think that that would be a primary in in the early schools early years in school because there's children from every background is there a is there resistance in your neighborhood or is this just Hawaii with the resistance so for my neighborhood I am not too familiar that there's a lot of resistance I know that there's other there's pockets of resistance in areas on the northern party islands I believe in in the northern portion when it comes to other areas on the north shore as well as in the Kailua area and a few other places in between I don't want to just go out and pick those out but I do feel that this is something that we have to but again Marsha person needs to go to the Department of Health and and to make those determinations well Ken you're always such a wealth of information my goodness I am so proud of and so pleased that you are willing to talk about these things so we I think we have to go and you will come back and we'll talk some more sure oh great thank you so much for being with us today and we look forward to seeing you again thank you very much Marsha thank you and we'll see you next time I love you