Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that a probe is underway after a school allegedly vaccinated a student without their parents’ consent.
“A school administered a federally funded vaccine to a child without the parent’s consent and despite a legally recognized state exemption,” he said in a video shared on X. “When any institution — a school, a doctor’s office, a clinic — disregards a religious exemption, it doesn’t just break trust, it also breaks the law.”
“We’re not going to tolerate it,” Kennedy declared.
“Parents have another right that every American should know,” he added. “And that’s the right of access to their children’s health records,” as established by HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.
“If a provider ignores consent, violates an exemption, or keeps parents in the dark, HHS will act quickly and decisively. We will use every tool at our disposal to protect families and restore accountability,” the health secretary further stated.
“Parents know their children best. Parents love their children the most. HHS will always defend their voice, their authority, and their rightful place at the center of their children’s health care decisions,” he said.
The investigation specifically targets whether the “school failed to comply with the Vaccines for Children Program (VFC) requirement that conditions federal provision of vaccines for immunization on compliance with state religious and other exemptions from compulsory vaccination,” said HHS.
Alongside the investigation, the agency issued a Dear Colleague Letter to health care providers, reminding them to honor parental access to children’s health information. The letter explains that the Office for Civil Rights “has become aware that there may be instances in which the parents of minor children are not receiving access to their children’s medical records to the extent required by the HIPAA Privacy Rule (‘Privacy Rule’).”
“For example, parents, as the personal representative of their minor children, may be denied access to their minor children’s medical records, or a covered entity may be requiring minor children to authorize parental access before such access will be granted, when no such requirement exists under applicable law and, thus, under the Privacy Rule,” the letter asserts. “Denial of access in those circumstances may be a violation of the Privacy Rule.”
