Suzanne Allison is a semi-retired public health nurse who lives in Barnstead.

Vaccines are considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. Visit any local cemetery in New England and you can see the results of infectious diseases in the 1800s, many of them now vaccine-preventable. In one season, those diseases could have taken several children in a family.

From the success of the polio trials in the 1950s and the eradication of smallpox in 1980 and cancer prevention vaccines, like hepatitis B and HPV, to the latest technologies that allow us to quickly fight novel pandemics like COVID-19, the numbers of deaths averted, hospitalizations prevented and societal cost-savings associated with vaccines are truly astounding.

In every state, the federal Vaccines For Children program, which began in 1994 with Rosalynn Carter and Betty Bumpers as catalysts, provides funding so that children who are on Medicaid, are uninsured or are American Indian/Alaskan Native can receive recommended vaccines at no cost at enrolled health care practices.

Here in New Hampshire, we also have New Hampshire Vaccine Association, which began around two decades ago and which became a model program for other states. The NHVA assesses insurance fees and the state uses those funds in combination with the VFC funds to purchase all recommended vaccines at a reduced contracted rate for all the state’s children through age 18. This comes at no cost to the health care provider or to the family. This successful partnership not only improves access to vaccinations for families but streamlines the vaccine ordering and administration process for health care providers while saving money for the practices and our health care systems.

Soon, the New Hampshire House of Representatives will vote on HB 524, a bill that would eliminate this successful program. We must urge our elected officials to oppose this bill for several reasons.

First, it is not what Granite Staters want. In-person and online testimony overwhelmingly opposed HB 524 during the committee hearing.

Second, the people most trusted for medical information — primary care providers, nurses, public health centers and the New Hampshire Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, among others — all oppose this bill.

And finally, it is bad for families. We know private insurers only reimburse providers at a fraction of the cost of vaccines, which includes purchase, storage and handling, counseling, administratio and documentation of vaccines, so a child’s health care provider may only carry the least expensive vaccines or none at all.

If New Hampshire loses the NHVA, providers who can’t afford to pay upfront for all of the childhood vaccines for privately insured patients will have to turn away families who choose to vaccinate, and families will need to either try to find another provider or skip vaccinations. Pharmacy vaccinations are not an option because pharmacies don’t vaccinate babies and young children. New Hampshire has historically maintained high childhood vaccine coverage rates, and it is, in part, because New Hampshire is a “universal vaccine purchase state.”

There is no reason to dismantle a successful and cost-effective system of providing vaccines to all families who desire it. There is no vaccine “mandate” associated with the NHVA. Rather it is an efficient and cost-saving way of delivering preventative health care.

Please urge your representatives to follow public and professional opinion by opposing this ridiculous anti-vax bill that will only cost Granite Staters and our health care systems more money while making access difficult for those who choose to vaccinate. And, of course, the fewer children who are vaccinated, the greater the risk posed not just to the unvaccinated child but to anyone vulnerable in that child’s family, school or child care facility and community.