POCATELLO — Public health officials are announcing how a recently passed state bill could affect teenagers who seek medical care.
The legislation that’s prompted this is Idaho Senate Bill 1329, which was signed March 21 and makes it so that minors who go seeking nonemergent, life-threatening medical care will no longer be able to receive it without in-person parental consent.
Southeast Idaho Public Health put out a release on May 8, announcing that its policies would have to change, just like every health care provider, to meet the requirements of the legislation.
“We’re going to be pretty rigorous about how we evaluate parental permission because we don’t want to violate this new statute,” said District Director Maggie Mann.
Before this legislation, Idaho law allowed for a health care provider to provide care for patients over the age of 14 if they were assessed to have the maturity and cognitive ability to seek it on their own. This law overrides this, while also allowing a parent or guardian to access their dependent’s health records.
The public health district offers a variety of services a minor might need, such as counseling, reproductive health care, vaccines and more.
A provider perceived as to have failed to comply with this law could be subject to private lawsuits.
Mann expressed concern for how the new law would affect vaccination efforts.
The district has historically done vaccination clinics at high schools, and how they worked before was that a child would take a parental permission slip home and bring it back in order to be vaccinated. The district will continue to run the clinics, but parents will have to come to the school in person to give consent for their child to be vaccinated.
“Parents really rely on those because they work, and they can’t always take time away to get a kid into an appointment,” Mann said.
Mann specified that it was the norm for all health care providers in Idaho to provide care to teenagers 14 and older as long as they were deemed as capable.
The public health district also, “always strongly encouraged parental communication about health care seeking,” but said that there were some circumstances where kids don’t feel safe to talk to a parent or guardian about a need.
Mann said that when some teenagers make the choice to become sexually active, and they could choose to not seek contraception to avoid their parents finding out. This could bring about an unplanned pregnancy or an STD. They could also choose not to seek counseling even if they’re struggling.
“That’s probably our major area of concern, is kids for whom the dynamics of the relationship are such that it might place them in some kind of jeopardy to have a conversation about this,” Mann said.
Mann emphasized that situations where a minor came forward to seek services without their parent knowing was rare.
“In most households, those conversations are happening, which is great, but there are a handful of families for whom those conversations are either just super uncomfortable or could potentially place the person in some kind of harm,” Mann said.
Mann said that Southeast Idaho Public Health encourages minors to approach their parents or guardians with any health issues that they’re having.
“Sometimes we build up in our minds that a conversation is going to be a certain way, but we don’t really know,” Mann said. “So we just really encourage those kids to have those conversations with their parents.”
Eastern Idaho Public Health offered the same advice in a statement.
“Eastern Idaho Public Health has always encouraged parents talking with their children about their health, and will continue to promote education and further discussion in order to make positive and healthy choices throughout their lives,” said James Corbett, director at Eastern Idaho Public Health.
Children or teenagers in an unsafe situation can find help with the Rise Up Youth Crisis Center, at 1140 Science Center Drive in Idaho Falls, which can be reached by phone at (208) 826-0994.
