Andy Close
WARREN, Pa. – The Warren County Commissioners tabled a motion for a vaccine promotion plan proposed by Commissioner Jeff Eggleston on Wednesday.
The commissioners are set to revisit the proposal in two weeks.
“At this stage, the vaccine rate in the county is somewhere in the 40s, which is low even by the state average,” Eggleston said. “The goal with this program is to use American Rescue Plan funds ($22,000) to use a promotion plan for the vaccines, to use local voices and recommendations of folks in the community.
“Part of it will be a discussion about what the vaccine actually does and why you should feel comfortable getting it. It would be done in conjunction with the Warren General Hospital, Warren Pediatrics and other health-related organizations. It’s not a mandate. We received quite a bit of public feedback.”
“For my part, I can appreciate the desire to do something,” Commissioner Ben Kafferlin said. “But I’ve picked up on four themes – It’s not likely to be effective in my opinion and not likely to change no matter how much money you spend. I don’t think that it’s in our scope of work as a county government. We provide support logistics for agencies that need help. I’m all for providing options, but it’s not our place to tell people to get it.”
“We’ll work on what this looks like and hopefully have a discussion about it and come up with something that’s acceptable,” said Commissioner Tricia Durbin. “I wasn’t thinking of it as a promotion as opposed to education in our community. I guess saying all of that. I think that I would be happy to revisit this with Jeff and think about a different way to approach it.”
