If you’re a graduate student at the University of Oregon, chances are that you won’t be lining up for a meningitis vaccine at Matthew Knight Arena anytime soon.
According to an email sent by the UO Grad School’s Assistant Dean, Kassy Fisher, yesterday morning, grad students that aren’t living on campus or suffering from certain “high risk medical conditions” won’t be eligible for the type B meningitis vaccine being offered to all UO undergraduates.
Dr. Patrick Luedtke, a senior public health officer for Lane County Public Health, said that eligibility for the vaccine is determined by a trio of public health entities: Lane County Public Health, the Center for Disease Control based in Atlanta and the Oregon Health Authority.
Though there aren’t any significant physiological differences from, “an 18-year-old freshman and 23-year-old grad student,” health officials decided eligibility based on “certain collaborative behaviors” that undergraduates are more likely to hold, Luedtke said. This includes things like sharing drinks and living in dorms — both of which increase the risk for meningococcal disease to spread.
Fisher’s email said that if grad students were interested in getting the vaccine from a local pharmacy, they would need to get a prescription and discuss coverage for the vaccine with a health insurance provider.
To Luedtke’s knowledge, no graduate students have been affected by this year’s meningococcemia outbreak — but the eligibilities are not set in stone. If additional studies reveal that grad students are more or equally at risk for contracting the disease than undergraduates, “they could change on occasion.”