On September 24, 2026, at 10:05 a.m., the Committee on Health, chaired by Councilmember Christina Henderson, held a hybrid public hearing in Room 412 of the John A. Wilson Building to consider three permanent bills: Bill 26-606 (Vaccine Administration Protection Amendment Act of 2026), Bill 26-688 (Student Health Care Amendment Act of 2026), and Bill 26-725 (School Health Certificate Modernization Amendment Act of 2026). The hearing included testimony from public witnesses and government officials from DC Health. No votes were taken; the record remains open until October 8, 2026.
All right, good morning. I'd like to call this public hearing for the Committee of Health to order. Today is Thursday, September 24th, 2026. The time is 10.05 a.m. I'm at large councilmember Christina Henderson, Chair of the Committee on Health. We are in room 412 of the John A. Wilson building. This is a hybrid hearing with public witnesses testifying virtually and in person and government witnesses testifying in person. This hearing is to consider three permanent bills before the committee. I'll describe each of the bills before we hear from our public witnesses. Bill 26 606, the Vaccine Administration Protection Amendment Act of 2026, introduced at the request of the mayor, would ensure health care providers are not held liable for any injury caused by prescribing, dispensing, ordering, furnishing, or administering of immunizations required by law or recommended by leading medical and public health entities. The bill also clarifies that such protections include the residual effects of vaccines or immunizing agents. As federal vaccine protections continue to change, this legislation aims to secure vaccine access across the district by clearly outlining liability protections for providers. The next two bills both aim to address some of the challenges related to the school health forms that the district requires families to submit for all school age children. Currently, all students attending pre-K through 12th grade in public school, public charter school, private school, independent school in the district, must submit a certificate of health and a certificate of oral health completed and signed by a health provider to their school in order to attend. This process for obtaining and submitting these forms is arcane and effective for protecting public health and unnecessary financial and logistical burden on families. Caregivers often must pay a fee for their pediatrician or dentist to complete and print the form. Then the caregiver is responsible for submitting the paper forms to the school. In many cases, these forms are lost, and parents are asked to submit the forms multiple times. At the end of the process, the health professional and the school health suite is then responsible for manually inputting the information on the form into a database. Not surprisingly, many families do not complete this process, and there's no enforcement of such requirement, it seems. Although I question the accuracy of these numbers, and we'll get into that why. Families have to go through a similar process for dental forms, which the Office of the State Superintendent for Education, also known as Aussie, and DC Health require, even though they're not required by law. For the past four years, the Committee on Health has pressed DC Health to modernize this process, but has seen very little progress. In fiscal year 2024, DC Health started to transition to an electronic system, allowing health providers to submit certificates of health electronically through a secure provider portal, but this process stalled. With DC Health Reporting challenges working with systems and their electronic health record vendors. Bill 26-688, the Student Health Care Amendment Act of 2026 was introduced by the mayor in May of 2026 and seeks to largely codify the status quo for these forms. The bill continues to require that families submit a paper copy of the Certificate of Health at the beginning of every single school year and adds the requirements for families to submit a certificate of oral health. The bill does not make any other changes to the process for how forms are submitted or processed. The mayor's bill includes provisions unrelated to the school health forms, including transferring the management of the undesignated epinephrine program from Aussie to DC Health, designating the Maryland Poison Center for the unit of the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy as the district's poison control center. Finally, and it dissolves the Perinatal and Infant Health Advisory Committee, which was never established. We were disappointed to see the outcome of DC Health's policy development, led to a bill that did not actually make any significant changes or reforms to the school health form process. I therefore introduced a bill, Bill 26-725, the School Health Certificate Modernization Amendment Act of 2026 in July of 2026, along with Chairman Mendelssohn, Councilmembers Bonds, Alan Freuman, and Lewis George. The bill would require the Department of Health to create a digital system for receiving certificates of health and oral health for students directly and for health care providers. It would also prohibit health care providers from charging for the certificate of health or the certificate of oral health, which is important. The bill also updates the health professional license and registration fees. DC Health's fee for licensed health professionals are out of step with jurisdictions and in some cases dampening the interest of new health professionals to work in the district. For example, a level one dental assistant, which is an entry level license for many individuals. Applicants must pay 190 for that license. While in Maryland and Virginia, they charge $20 and $100 respectively. On the other hand, veterinarians, full veterinarians only pay $215 for licensure, even though comparable advanced degree professionals pay a much higher fee, such as physicians who are paying $85, psychologists who are paying $321, and dentists who are paying $430. I look forward to this conversation today. As colleagues join, we'll certainly turn to them. For the public who may be watching, there's quite a bit of security activity happening down by the Wilson building today, which is impeding the ability of some people to get into the building. To be clear, it's a security situation that does not involve the building or local folks, et cetera. We have a state visit by the president of China. And we are incredibly close to all the action. So I'm gonna turn to the public witnesses who we have here. We'll go through the list. Hopefully, by the time that will give some folks an opportunity to get through the security checkpoints and come in, and then we will go from there.