Alaska
Hepatitis vaccines credited as life-saving for Alaska children may be upended
Western Alaska, where almost all the residents are Indigenous, used to have the world’s highest rate of childhood liver cancer caused by hepatitis B. After decades of screenings and vaccinations, that problem has been eliminated; since 1995, only one person under the age of 30 has been diagnosed with hepatitis-caused cancer.
Now the Trump administration is seeking to end one of the key tools credited with accomplishing that goal: hepatitis B vaccinations of newborns.
The federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Friday voted to drop a longstanding recommendation for universal hepatitis vaccines for newborns. That is in accordance with the controversial views of U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who fired all members of the previous committee and appointed like-minded members to replace them.
Current federal childhood hepatitis B vaccination guidelines recommend one dose of the vaccine at birth, followed by additional doses at intervals through 18 months. The recommendation for newborn vaccinations has been in place since 1991.
The advisory committee, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, determined that children under 2 months should not be vaccinated unless their mothers are infected or could be infected by hepatitis B.
Some vaccine critics in the administration, including Kennedy and President Donald Trump themselves, argue — contradicting medical experts and years of medical research — that hepatitis B vaccines for young children are unnecessary, claiming that it is spread primarily or exclusively through adult behavior like sex and sharing of needles for illegal drug use.
“Hepatitis B is sexually transmitted. There’s no reason to give a baby that’s almost just born hepatitis B. So I would say wait till the baby is 12 years old and formed and take hepatitis B,” Trump said at a Sept. 22 news conference.
Those claims are false, said Dr. Brian McMahon, medical and research director of the liver and hepatitis program at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.
There is no credible evidence of a link between the vaccine and autism of any other health problem, McMahon said.
And sexual transmissions accounted for only a tiny percentage of Alaska’s hepatitis B cases, he said.
Aside from mother-to-infant transmissions, which occur during childbirth, hepatitis B was predominantly spread in Western Alaska through normal daily activities. That is because, unlike the HIV virus or other hepatitis viruses, the hepatitis B virus can live for seven days on surfaces in schools and homes, like tables and personal-grooming items.
“The virus can be found all over, on school luncheon tabletops, counters and homes,” McMahon said. “Kids have open cuts and scratches from bug bites or anything else, and then they shed millions of particles of the virus on environmental surfaces. And then another kid comes along with an open cut or scratch.”
Such risks are exacerbated in rural Alaska, he said, where homes can be crowded and people pursue traditional subsistence lifestyles with a lot of outdoor activities.
“They’re hunting, fishing, cutting up meat, et cetera, and mosquito bites are real prominent,” he said.
Nationally, only 12.6% of chronic hepatitis B cases recorded from 2013 to 2018 were attributable to sexual transmission, according to a 2023 CDC study. Transmissions of all forms of hepatitis, including hepatitis B, are possible through contact sports like football, rugby and hockey, researchers have found.
Alaska’s disease and vaccination success
Before the past decades of vaccination and screening, hepatitis B was so prevalent in Western Alaska that it was classified as endemic there. It was the only part of the United States with such a classification. In some villages, 20% to 30% of the residents were infected, McMahon said.
Geography and ancient migration patterns accounted for historically high rates of the disease in Western Alaska, as well as other Indigenous regions of the Arctic.
Various strains have been carried from Asia to Alaska over millennia, according to scientists. And the remoteness of Indigenous communities meant isolation from medical services, making early diagnosis difficult in the past, allowing infections to linger and be passed down through generations, according to scientists.
In Alaska, children infected with the virus early in life had a high likelihood of winding up with chronic infections that caused serious complications later, such as liver failure. The worst cases resulted in cancer, and even death.
For McMahon, now in his 80s, treating cancer-stricken children in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region, where he worked in the 1970s, was harrowing.
One of his patients was a 17-year-old high school valedictorian. A few months earlier, she started having abdominal pains, but she ignored them.
“She was really busy with school, and she’d gotten a full ride scholarship and was excited about going to the University of Alaska, representing her community,” McMahon said.
The pains turned out to be cancer, caused by a hepatitis B infection that she had not known she had. Too sick to be flown home, she died in the Bethel hospital.
“It was horrible,” McMahon said.
Another patient was an 11-year-old boy, also diagnosed after he complained of similar abdominal pain. McMahon visited him at home, where the boy was “in horrible pain” and yellow from jaundice.
“He was just crying. He said, ‘I know I’m going to die. Just help me with my pain,’” McMahon said.
“My wife was with me. She was a public health nurse. She was in tears. The community health aide practitioner was in tears. I was fighting my tears and pulling everything I could out of my bag to try to help this patient sedate. It was just something I’ll never forget. Never,” McMahon said.
He has relayed these and other experiences to the vaccine advisory committee in hopes of persuading members to keep the infant recommendations in place.
“I said, ‘Do you want to be responsible for children getting liver cancer because of this decision?’” McMahon said. “So I’m probably not very popular right now.”
Alaska was one of the first places in the world where the hepatitis B vaccine was used as soon as it became available in 1981.
The pilot vaccination project was at the insistence of Alaska Native organizations, along with the state government and the Alaska congressional delegation. Under that pilot program, according to newly published study by McMahon and other researchers from ANTHC and the CDC’s Arctic program, tribal health organizations and their partners screened 53,860 Alaska Native people for infection and gave vaccines to 43,618 Alaska Native people who tested negative, along with starting the universal newborn vaccinations.
Health officials have followed the outcomes since then, and the new study lists several achievements 40 years after universal newborn vaccination started.
Since 1995, according to the study, there have been no new symptomatic cases of hepatitis B among Alaska Natives under 20 anywhere in the state. Since 2000, no new cases of hepatitis-related liver cancer have been identified among Alaska Natives of any age in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, a region where prevalence was concentrated in the past, the study said. And follow-up surveillance has revealed that childhood hepatitis B vaccinations remain effective for at least 35 years, the study said.
Successes are also reflected in the trend of acute hepatitis, the form of infection that is short-lived and can be cleared from the body.
There have been no identified cases of acute hepatitis among Alaska Native children since 1992, according to Johns Hopkins University. The rate of acute hepatitis among Alaskans of all ages and ethnicities dropped from 12.1 cases per 100,000 people to 0.9 per 100,000 in the 2002-2015 period, according to the state Department of Health’s epidemiology section.
Alaska’s rate of chronic hepatitis B — the long-term and persistent infection that can lead to serious liver problems — remains higher than the national average. As of 2020, Alaska’s rate of chronic hepatitis B was 14.2 cases per 100,000 people, nearly triple the national rate of 5 cases per 100,000 people, according to a report by the state Department of Health’s epidemiology section.
McMahon said that is partly because of the legacy of infections in the older Native population, people whose childhood predated widespread vaccination, and prevalence among foreign-born residents who come from countries without widespread vaccination.
Debate over hepatitis B risks
This year, vaccine skeptics who are members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, however, along with people who are advising the committee, have argued that the risks of hepatitis B among children are too low to justify universal infant vaccination.
One of the officials making that argument at Thursday’s committee meeting was Dr. Cynthia Nevison, a vaccine skeptic hired as a CDC consultant. She contradicted McMahon’s description of children spreading the virus through casual contact with contaminated surfaces — a process known as “horizontal transmission.”
“There’s very little evidence that horizontal transmission has ever been a significant threat to the average American child, and the risk probably has been overstated,” she said at the meeting. Also overstated, she said, are the risks of “vertical transmission,” the viral transmission between mothers and their newborns.
The committee’s new recommendation must be approved by the CDC administrator before it becomes federal policy.
McMahon said that no matter how national policy might change, Alaska Native tribal health organizations will continue administering hepatitis B vaccines to newborns.
“I know they’re not going to stop. Even if they have to pay for it. They’re so aware of this,” he said.
His fears, he said, are for low-income families who depend on free vaccinations through state programs that might lose funding and for parents who are getting conflicting messages that may lead to conclusions that the vaccine is not necessary.
“It could be a real mess,” he said.
Originally published by the Alaska Beacon, an independent, nonpartisan news organization that covers Alaska state government.
In exchange for living in what is perhaps the country’s most beautiful state, Alaskans sometimes have to do without: professional sports teams, Trader Joe’s and, well, sunlight for half the year. But we make up for it with the Iditarod, reindeer sausages and chasing the aurora borealis. In other words, we often have to make our own fun. And by “fun” I mean “beer.” Those words are interchangeable, right?
Beer is a big part of life for Alaskans. We hike with it, camp with it, boat with it, cook with it and pair it with foods like the stuffiest of sommeliers. We throw it monthly birthday parties like the First Tap events at Broken Tooth Brewing Co. (otherwise known as Bear Tooth Theatrepub and Moose’s Tooth Pub & Pizzeria), complete with national musical acts like Modest Mouse, Clinton Fearon, and Norah Jones. We even occasionally do yoga with it (at downtown’s Williwaw Social). In other words, we take it everywhere and we take it seriously.
Beers from the state’s biggest brewery, Alaskan Brewing Co. based in Juneau, might already be in your refrigerator if you live in one of the 25 states where it’s available. Established in 1986 by Marcy and Geoff Larson, it was the 67th independent brewery to open in the country. With a steady line of signature brews, including their most recent “Wildness” beer, it’s the most well-established of all the state’s breweries. Expect seasonal specialties that incorporate ingredients like cranberries, raspberries, locally roasted coffee, locally grown white wheat from the Matanuska-Susitna area and even Alaska spruce tips. Ubiquitous around Alaska, this is our Papa Beer, if you will (I’ll show myself out).
But Alaskan Brewing is just one out of the more-than 50 breweries, distilleries, meaderies and cideries in the state (for an excellent list visit brewersguildofalaska.org). And while almost half of them are in Anchorage or within a short drive of our state’s largest city (including the relatively populous communities of Girdwood, Eagle River, Palmer and Wasilla), some of our most remote ports of call and tiniest towns are also in on the brewing action (I’m looking at you, Cooper Landing Brewing Company in Cooper Landing, population 231).
The ever-expanding Denali Brewing Co. in Talkeetna (population 997) may be a small-town hero, but it’s anything but small. Their four signature beers — Mother Ale, Chuli Stout, Single Engine Red and the ever-popular Twister Creek IPA, as well seasonal brews like Slow Down Brown and Flag Stop Milepost #3 — are year-round mainstays of summer barbecues and winter bonfires around the state.
This brewery is also home to the more recently established Alaska Cider Works, Alaska Meadery (featuring “Razzery,” a mead made with raspberries, sour cherries and apples) and Denali Spirits (featuring vodka, gin, whiskey, and “smoke” whiskey), because when you’ve fermented one, why not ferment them all?
(Denali Spirits’ canned cocktails, especially their blueberry mojito, have been so popular in Anchorage that at one time there was a Facebook page largely dedicated to tracking them down. Luckily, supply has since caught up with demand.)
Some breweries are even more remote. Ports of call and island hopping here can be one way to get your fill of hops. Breweries can be found in Ketchikan (Bawden Street Brewing Co.), Kodiak (Kodiak Island Brewing & Still, Double Shovel Kodiak Cidery, and Olds River Inn), Homer (Homer Brewing Co. and Grace Ridge Brewing Co. for beer, and you can also check out Sweetgale Meadworks & Cider House for hard cider and locally sourced meads featuring ingredients like nagoonberry), Sitka (Harbor Mountain Brewing), Seward (Seward Brewing Co. and Stoney Creek Brewhouse), Valdez (Valdez Brewing and Growler Bay Brewing), and Skagway (Klondike Brewing Co. and Skagway Brewing Co.).
Of course, many trips to Alaska begin and end in Anchorage. And if, during your travels, you’ve foolishly left some beers untasted, you can make up for lost time in our state’s biggest city which boasts — let’s face it — a ridiculous number of exceptional craft breweries.
Downtown’s Glacier Brewhouse specializes in oak-aged English and American West Coast-style beers, 13 of them, from blondes to stouts. Beneath the floor of the Brewhouse is a “Wall of Wood” comprised of casks of special release beers that are conditioned in oak barrels once used to age wine and bourbon. The history of the oak imparts “mother tongue” flavor characteristics, like vanilla and coconut, into these limited edition brews. Opt for one of these unique beers or choose from their flagship choices like raspberry wheat, oatmeal stout, imperial blonde, Bavarian hefeweizen or a flight that includes them all.
Down the street is 49th State Brewing Co., which expanded into Anchorage from its original location in Healy, at the edge of Denali National Park and Preserve. If you are unable to visit their flagship location, where you can sip beer while playing bocce or horseshoes on the lawn, you can catch up with them here. There’s a unique selection that includes beers like Smok, a smoked lager, as well as seasonal offerings like the Tiger’s Blood Sour, an homage to shave ice described as ”ferociously fruity.” Or there’s “Apple Fritter Ale,” with hints of cinnamon, icing, caramel, and vanilla. This location also boasts some of the best views in Anchorage and an expansive outdoor rooftop patio.
Just about all of the full-service restaurants in downtown Anchorage proudly feature some variety of Alaskan beers. In the heart of downtown, Humpy’s Great Alaskan Alehouse prides itself on a huge selection of beers, both international and local. Tent City Taphouse offers a diverse and carefully curated list of 24 rotating local brews, including their house beer, Tent City Tangerine IPA brewed by Glacier Brewhouse. Tent City regularly hosts “Taste of the North” beer dinners featuring Alaskan brewers. One, in collaboration with Grace Ridge Brewing Company, featured smoked salmon canapes with Black Pepper IPA, classic beef Wellington with an Oystercatcher stout and roasted honey lamb chops with a Winter Cranberry Ale.
If you have transportation around the city, treat yourself to a brewery tasting-room tour. Found in unassuming little side streets in the more industrial areas of Anchorage, some of our best beers can be sipped and savored at the source. Finding these funky little spots can feel like being invited to a secret party. And it’s a glimpse into Anchorage’s most authentic beer culture.
In midtown, Onsite Brewing Co. has unique, small-batch brews in a funky relaxed environment. Further south, King Street Brewing Co., Turnagain Brewing, Cynosure Brewing, Magnetic North Brewing Company, Brewerks, and one of our newest, Ship Creek Brewing Company are all within a stone’s throw of one another. If you’re lucky, you might run into one of Anchorage’s popular food trucks parked outside, so you’ll have something to wash down with your flights. Depending on the day, you might find reindeer sausages, pad Thai, cheesesteaks or pupusas. On the weekends, Anchorage Brewing Company features a top-notch in-house pop-up restaurant, called Familia, with a rotating menu featuring local Alaskan ingredients.
One of the newest and furthest south breweries, while still in the Anchorage bowl, is Raven’s Ring Brewing Company, which is a brewery/winery and meadery. From a traditional IPA to a Concorde grape wine called Grape Juice to a rotating Vintner’s pour like Sweet Peach Jalapeno mead, this ambitious operation is challenging the notion that you can’t please everyone.
Other Anchorage points of interest for non-hoppy but still home-grown adult beverages include Anchorage Distillery, Zip Kombucha, Double Shovel Cidery and Hive Mind Meadery.
If your travels are over and you still haven’t had your fill, check out the Silver Gulch Brewing & Bottling Co. inside Terminal C at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport on your way out of town. An offshoot of the flagship Silver Gulch brewery in Fox, Alaska (about 10 miles north of Fairbanks), this location has a bar and restaurant, and a retail shop carrying growlers of their own brews as well as those of other Alaskan brewers and distillers. Last-minute souvenir shopping never tasted so good.
Before you start your great Northern beer safari, bear in mind that tasting rooms often have limited and varying hours, so always double-check before planning a visit.
Whether your travels take you to fine-dining restaurants, low-key alehouses or even rustic cabins in the woods, make like an Alaskan and fuel your adventures with one of our beloved, home-grown brews. When in Alaska, drink as the Alaskans do.
Mara Severin is a food writer who writes about restaurants in Southcentral Alaska for the Anchorage Daily News.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Coast Guard announced Thursday that the first two Arctic Security Cutters will be homeported in the State of Alaska. Anticipating delivery of the first Arctic Security Cutters by the end of 2028, the Coast Guard has begun planning to ensure necessary infrastructure and support are in place to receive two icebreakers. Ensuring these vessels are supported by trained and ready crews, and ready homeport facilities including housing, will be essential to delivering full, enduring operational capability required to meet emerging Arctic security challenges.
“Homeporting these two Arctic Security Cutters in Alaska is a decisive step forward in securing America’s Arctic frontier,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin. “I want to thank President Trump for his bold leadership and vision in directing this critical investment, as well as Senator Sullivan and the entire Alaskan Congressional delegation for championing the funding that made these icebreakers possible. These vessels will deliver the enduring operational presence our nation needs to protect sovereignty, deter foreign adversaries, and safeguard vital resources for the American people..”
The homeporting of the first two Arctic Security Cutters in Alaska builds on the historic expansion of the Coast Guard’s icebreaker fleet and underscores an unprecedented investment in the Arctic. This announcement marks a national milestone in U.S. Arctic capability, following contract awards for up to 11 Arctic Security Cutters. Fueled by $3.5 billion in funding in the Fiscal Year 2025 Reconciliation Bill and facilitated by a groundbreaking Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the United States and Finland in October 2025, the acquisition of Arctic Security Cutters will fulfill President Trump’s directive to rapidly deliver America’s newest icebreaker fleet.
“Homeporting Arctic Security Cutters in Alaska underscores the United States’ leadership as a maritime power in the Arctic,” said Adm. Kevin E. Lunday, commandant of the Coast Guard. “By strategically positioning these state-of-the-art icebreakers in Alaska, the Coast Guard will maximize our ability to defend our northern border and approaches, while reinforcing America’s maritime dominance in a crucial region of strategic importance.”
Through contract awards to Rauma Marine Constructions Oy of Rauma, Finland, Bollinger Shipyards Lockport, L.L.C., and Davie Defense, Inc. of Vienna, VA, the U.S. will immediately benefit from our Finnish partners’ icebreaker expertise while coordinating the onshoring of that expertise and shipbuilding to the United States. Under the MOU, Finland will construct up to four ASCs for the U.S Coast Guard. U.S. shipyards will build and deliver up to seven additional ASCs. Delivery of the first Arctic Security Cutters is expected by the end of 2028.
Arctic Security Cutters will form the backbone of a revitalized U.S. icebreaker fleet, strengthening American maritime dominance in the Arctic. Fielding specialized capabilities, these icebreakers will defend U.S. sovereignty, secure critical shipping lanes, protect energy and mineral resources, and counter foreign malign influence in the Arctic region. A robust icebreaker fleet will enable the Coast Guard to control, secure and defend U.S. Alaskan borders and Arctic maritime approaches, facilitate maritime commerce vital to economic prosperity and strategic mobility, and respond to crises and contingencies in the region.
Acquisition of Arctic Security Cutters supports the Coast Guard’s ongoing modernization, through which the Service is transforming into a more agile, capable and responsive fighting force.
Memorandum on ASC Homeporting
###
Alaska
‘We never forgot her’: Friends, family of longtime Alaska teacher gather for 100th birthday celebration
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Phyllis Sullivan has certainly led a life worth celebrating.
Born in 1926, Sullivan moved to Alaska with her husband and three children in 1959 to teach, first in the village of Kwethluk in Western Alaska and later at Wendler and Mears Middle Schools in Anchorage.
All the while, she left strong impressions with countless students and acquaintances, some of whom gathered in the basement of Anchor Park United Methodist Church in Anchorage Saturday to celebrate Sullivan’s century of life.
“Education has been the primary thing in her entire life,” her son Dennis Sullivan said. “She’s always been a school teacher and she’s been one of the sweetest people in the entire world.”
As a slideshow featuring vintage photos from her life and time in Alaska played, Phyllis, wheelchair-bound but high in spirit, stopped to chat with every new person who entered the room, some of whom she hadn’t seen in years.
“It’s impressive that this many people are here,” she said. “That’s very encouraging. Makes me think maybe I did something right along the way.”
Aside from family members, most visitors were there because of the impression Phyllis Sullivan left on them during her many years in the classroom.
“She gave us this one assignment: to memorize a poem,” former Mears student Tina Arend recalled. She said Phyllis Sullivan was her 8th grade English teacher.
“And when she gave us the assignment, she said, ‘I’ve had students come back many, many, many years later and recite the poem to me.’ And we actually still remember the poem,” Arend said of her and her husband, who was also in attendance. They both went on to become teachers at Mears as well.
Matthew Nicolai, whom Phyllis Sullivan taught in Kwethluk, has similarly fond memories.
“The Bureau had ordered that teachers do corporal punishment for speaking Yup’ik,” Nicolai remembered. “Even though we spoke Yup’ik, she never did that, never cracked our hands. Other teachers did, but not her. That’s why we never forgot her.”
In addition to teaching, Phyllis Sullivan also found time to open her home to those in need. She and her husband once took in a family with seven kids who had been displaced by flooding in Fairbanks in 1967.
“It touched our heart because they bought us a lot of stuff that we needed because we lost a lot of stuff during the flood,” David Solomon, one of those seven kids, said. “We stayed there for over three years.”
Phyllis Sullivan said she is enjoying life and is doing fine.
“My mother made it to 103,” she said. “So, I’ve got a while yet.”
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