A child receives one of two vaccinations for flu and COVID-19 at the Cumberland County Department of Public Health in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Elizabeth Bechard, public health manager for Moms Clean Air Force, plays with her twins.

Each time I’ve tried to schedule updated COVID-19 shots for my 9-year-old twins, I’ve received an ominous message from our local pharmacy’s online scheduling system: “Due to state restrictions, we’re unable to schedule your COVID-19 vaccine.”

Recent changes to vaccine policy from Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mutilated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hit close to home for my family in Vermont. For some children, a bout of COVID-19 might mean a mild case of sniffles. For us, my son's autoimmune disorder means that coronavirus disease could trigger months of harrowing symptoms that profoundly impact not just him but our entire family. I’m terrified that none of my children’s healthy classmates will be able to easily access the updated vaccines that could keep my son safer.

I’m not alone. Millions of people in America have medical conditions that put them at higher risk for COVID-19 complications. What will the erosion of commonsense public health policy mean for them and families like mine with medically vulnerable children?

Vaccines, climate action key to our children's future

It’s not just vaccine policy changes I’m worried about. In my professional life, I’m an advocate for sensible environmental protections that keep children and communities safe from air pollution and climate change, not least because children like my son are especially at risk of escalating threats like extreme heat and an increased spread of tick-borne illnesses.

And it is in the environmental space, too, that the administration of President Donald Trump is assaulting safeguards vital to protecting children’s well-being. Among the most frightening actions is the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent proposal to rescind the endangerment finding, the legal and scientific basis of its ability to limit climate pollution.

If successful, this would cripple essential protections needed to fight global warming. Public health experts are clear that climate change poses an existential threat to children's health. What will the erosion of commonsense climate policy mean for families who are already feeling the devastating impacts of supercharged heat waves, hurricanes and wildfires?

Both vaccines and climate action play a vital role in keeping children safe from avoidable hazards, dangers that are often difficult to see through the haze of collective amnesia about the past and collective unwillingness to act for the benefit of the future.

In the United States alone, COVID-19 vaccines are estimated to have saved millions of lives and prevented millions of infections, and CDC-led research found that pediatric coronavirus disease vaccinations led to a significantly lower risk of debilitating long COVID for children ages 5-17.

Climate action, too, saves lives and protects kids. According to a 2023 EPA report on climate change and children’s health, mitigating further global warming by limiting climate pollution would prevent tens of thousands of emergency room visits for asthma, avert tens of thousands of extreme heat-related emergency visits and prevent hundreds of thousands of children from being displaced by sea level rise.

Unraveling EPA climate action would almost certainly result in more child fatalities related to weather and climate injuries.

Even Republicans are questioning RFK Jr.'s false claims

It is incomprehensible, then, that both vaccine and climate policy are being actively undermined by a handful of activists whose extremist views are condemned by the overwhelming majority of public health and climate experts.

In August, CDC Director Susan Monarez was reportedly fired over an unwillingness to rubberstamp vaccine recommendations that “flew in the face of science.” In a contentious Sept. 4 Senate hearing, Kennedy made repeated false claims about vaccines; even Republicans were incredulous.

The same week, leading climate scientists condemned a Department of Energy report used as a lynchpin of the EPA’s efforts to rescind the endangerment finding, asserting that it misrepresents basic facts, contains numerous errors and mixes up results of multiple scientific studies.

Every child deserves the protection of robust, evidence-based policies to minimize avoidable health risks, but I fear the current administration is failing our children and abandoning parents and caregivers on every front.

Like millions of others, though, I will keep fighting, both to get COVID-19 vaccines for my children and for the climate action they and future generations deserve.

There is no online system for parents to schedule precautionary measures against the next climate disaster. But if there were, I imagine receiving the following error message: “Due to autocracy, we’re unable to protect your children from preventable environmental harms.”

Elizabeth Bechard is the public health manager for Moms Clean Air Force and author of "Parenting in a Changing Climate: Tools for Cultivating Resilience, Taking Action, and Practicing Hope in the Face of Climate Change."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: My son has an autoimmune disease. Trump's climate inaction puts him at risk. | Opinion

Reporting by Elizabeth Bechard / USA TODAY

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