Staff from The Globe, as well as media partners U-View and WPPJ traveled to Washington, D.C. to cover the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump as the nation’s 45th president. From protests to rallies, readers will find print, photo, video and audio content that chronicles that journey from Pittsburgh to D.C.
AP Photo / AP Measles, mumps and rubella vaccines sit in a cooler at the Rockland County Health Department in Pomona, N.Y.
More parents than ever are choosing to not vaccinate their children because of medical, religious or philosophical reasons in Western Pennsylvania. The data, tracked annually by the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Safe Schools database and by way of the Pennsylvania School Immunization Law Report (SILR), showed that for the 2017-18 school year, most counties in Pennsylvania either saw increases in the number of unvaccinated children or the percentage of those exempt from vaccination stayed the same. The report chronicles the immunization status of students in kindergarten through seventh grade in public or private schools throughout the state. A child may have more than one exemption, such as medical and religious. Home schooled children report to the school district they live in and are required to follow the same requirements as children attending school. Allegheny, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties all saw increases in exemptions based on religious beliefs, while Westmoreland and Allegheny counties saw slight decreases in philosophical exemptions and medical exemptions. According to the database, 1,210 students in these four counties entered the 2017-18 school year without vaccinations — around 70 more students than the previous school year, where the database recorded that 1,139 children went without vaccinations. Pennsylvania saw collective increases for both religious and philosophical exemptions, and the number for medically exempt students stayed the same, rounding out at 0.6% for a total of 1,640 medically exempt students in the counties that data was collected from across the state. While there are three categories for exemption, Vickie McCullough, a certified school nurse and nursing department head for Belle Vernon Area School District, said parents tell her there are many more reasons why they choose to not vaccinate their children. She said since the law was passed to allow the exemptions in Pennsylvania, she has seen more parents choose to not vaccinate under the belief that vaccination leads to adverse effects, potentially causing autism. “That myth has been proven false by the medical community,” McCullough said. “But the parents don’t have to tell us exactly why they’re choosing to not vaccinate; they just have to tell us morally that they do not want to do so.” All 50 states allow for medical exemptions in school. Forty-five allow religious exemptions and 15 permit abstention on philosophical reasons. Nicholle Frantz considers her decision to not vaccinate her children entirely related to their health. Her daughter was diagnosed with rotavirus two weeks after getting the vaccine — something she said her doctor kept passing off as a cold or the flu. Frantz went to another doctor, who then diagnosed her children with rotavirus. Rotavirus is a viral infection that causes severe diarrhea in children, particularly those younger than age 2. The infection and resulting diarrhea can be dangerous for babies because it can cause the rapid loss of body fluids, leading to dehydration. Frantz is the mother of three children, a 10-month old baby and two others who attend school in McKeesport. Her 5-year-old is a kindergarten student and her 8-year-old is in third grade. She also has a stepson whom she said is fully vaccinated. When their 5-year-old was 1 1/2, Frantz and her partner made the decision to opt out of vaccinations because the child had what Frantz called “adverse effects” after vaccination, and cited chronic ear infections as the outcome. Frantz doesn’t see this as a coincidence, and their 10-month-old is completely unvaxxed. “Some would assume this is ‘an experiment,’ however, it’s just timing of gathering research and proper information about vaccines that wasn’t publicized for parents,” Frantz said of unvaxxing. “We were led to not vaccinate.” McCullough stressed that vaccinations are widely accepted in the medical community as integral parts of school health and said she advocates for every child to be properly vaccinated. “I feel that immunizations are of utmost importance with communicable disease prevention, and the medical community has shown this through years of research and immunizing children,” McCullough said, citing that polio was eradicated in America because of the development of the polio vaccine. Nate Wardel, press secretary of the state Department of Health, said his office saw a sharp increase in vaccination exemptions beginning in 2017. “We saw vaccination rates that were not at the level we wanted to be,” he said. “For some, it was the measles and mumps. The vaccination rate was below 90% when the Wolf administration took office. We did take some effort to increase vaccination rates and encourage people to get vaccinated.” Wardel and McCullough agree that anti-vaccination numbers continue to rise, due in part to the law permitting the legal right to use a religious or philosophical exemption, the community-building surrounding anti-vaccination as well as celebrity influence. “Sometimes it depends on their religion,” McCullough said. “Sometimes it just depends on the personal feelings about any type of medication or anything being injected into the body.” Most religions have no prohibition against vaccines, but some do have considerations concerning injecting the body or “killing” living organisms considered to be found in vaccines, according to research completed by Vanderbilt Faculty and Staff Health. For major religions such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and Judaism, there are no explicit regulations concerning vaccination. Actress Jessica Biel is a public advocate for vaccination exemption and has gotten media attention from statements concerning her belief in the parents’ choice to vax or not to vax. “You have people that have a large following as celebrities, but they aren’t the experts on science and health,” Wordel said. “They have a wide audience through social media to spread their views.” Frantz’s decision to not vaccinate her children comes from a place of personal experience as well as those of her friends. She said she’s known friends to miscarry or have stillbirths after they were vaccinated and said she knows families who have lost children from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, SIDS, after receiving a vaccine. “Who is going to be held responsible if my child suffers a vaccine injury?” she asked. “Vaccine makers are protected from that ... fevers, increased sleep and rashes are never normal, especially after a vaccination.” Wordel said vaccines are getting more attention than ever, from both supporters and skeptics. “There’s an increase in awareness to vaccinations from a large standpoint,” he said. “You have a lot of news articles and reports about the increase of infectious diseases, and we have had 13 measles cases in Pennsylvania this year. We had a mumps outbreak at Temple University, so Pennsylvania has not been immune from these infectious disease outbreaks.” McCullough said most of the vaccine-related calls she fields are from parents with children who have diagnoses that make them more susceptible to communicable diseases. “That’s something we try to educate everyone on, to vaccinate to prevent communicable diseases, which have been pretty much eradicated with vaccines now,” McCullough said. “For instance, any child that’s gone through treatment for cancer, or if a child has an immunosuppressive diagnosis or conditions that make them more at risk to contract anything that’s communicable, like measles, chicken pox, mumps or pertussis. They just can’t fight it off as well.” McCullough said if there’s an outbreak of these diseases, those children with conditions that make them more susceptible are excluded from school — sometimes for several weeks at a time. “It could go from a couple weeks to a lengthy period if other students who are not immunized or even fully immunized keep coming down with the disease,” Mc-Cullough said. Wordel said the Department of Health considers populations in danger of contracting a disease when the number varies 5% below the total population. “When the percent of vaccinated students drops below 95%, then we start to worry there’s a potential for infectious disease to spread as opposed to a community with a higher vaccination rate,” Wordel said. McCullough said she believes it takes only one sick student to potentially infect an entire population. “Honestly, even if there’s one student that’s not immunized, it puts others at great risk. That’s all it takes,” she said. Frantz said she’s received non-stop criticism for her choice. When this happens, she said she chooses to educate parents by telling them what she feels is the truth about vaccination. “I receive criticism all the time for choosing not to vaccinate my children ... everyone believes they’re the perfect parent,” Frantz said. “In that case, I like to give people a better understanding by simply educating them on what they’re not told. I know a lot of parents who have chosen to not vaccinate that I’ve met simply by being vocal about my choice.” Wordel and McCullough pointed to primary care doctors and pediatricians as the main source for vaccine-related issues, citing them as the best sources of information on vaccines. “It’s important for parents to follow up with their primary care doctors who will advocate for immunization,” McCullough said. “It comes from their pediatricians, not just us. Between both of us advocating to immunize, that’s all we can do. We can advocate and educate, but parents ultimately have the final choice at this point.”
Student activists look to continue #MeToo conversation on campus
If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a world to educate them on sexual assault. Seniors Hannah Helper and Wesley Ehle share quite a bit – busy schedules, jobs within the Office of Student Life and an unrelenting ability to crack a good pun, just to name a few – but they also share a belief in the significance of raising a child up on the right side of history.
To continue reading about student activists Hepler and Ehle, click here.
Connected by kidneys
for the Mon Valley Independent
Shown, back row, from left, are Amber Evon, Tiffany Evon-Moore, Sandy Evon, Tracie Sivak and Deb Keefer. In the front are Sandy’s grandchildren, Brayden, Isabella and Aubrey. After waiting for three years, Sandy is receiving a kidney transplant today.
Tracie Sivak said her family doesn’t give each other candles for Christmas. They give kidneys. “We joke all the time about asking people what their blood type is,” she laughed. Across their lives, nearly early every member of Sivak’s extended family has either donated a kidney to another family member, or been in need of one. “We have three living kidney donors in our family,” she said, flanked by four female family members at her dining room table in her Rostraver home. The women poised around the table surrounding Sivak were Tiffany Evon-Moore of Florida, Amber Evon, Sandy Evon, both of Star Junction and Deb Keefer of Belle Vernon. All five women have been touched by varying kidney diseases, cancers and afflictions — either through a spouse or family member, or for three of them, from personal experience. Tracie and Sandy are sisters, and for them, these illnesses date back decades. When they were alive, their parents Robert and Theresa both received kidney transplants. Later in life, Sandy’s mother-in-law had to go on dialysis. Their brother Bob was also a three-time kidney transplant recipient. Of the three transplants, one came from his sister and one came by way of his wife, Keefer. Tracie’s husband was put on dialysis and later passed away. Sandy’s daughter Amber had to go on dialysis and then went on to receive a kidney transplant 10 years ago; she received her kidney from her father, John. Evon-Moore contracted sepsis and was close to death. Her daughter Hailey was born with a kidney condition that causes narrowing in her urethra. After seeing her daughter Amber endure the agony of dialysis and a kidney transplant at the age of 29, Sandy now faces a kidney transplant for herself. Yesterday was the first day in three years she hasn’t been on dialysis. Today, she will receive a new kidney. Tracie and Sandy have another sister, who left the area in 1973 for college. The sisters said their sister went on to live in Georgia, where she has remained untouched by all varieties of kidney disease. They said her children are all very healthy. All three of Sandy’s children have autoimmune diseases. Sandy, in particular, said she feels the sickness in her family is related to the southwestern Pa. environment they’ve spent most of their entire lives living in. “There’s too many people sick,” she said. “I mean really normal, healthy people getting really bad sick. In Allenport, the Mon Valley, I mean everywhere you look there’s someone sick. It’s not just us. It’s like there’s a secret.” This secret, she said, could be related to plenty of factors, including water and air quality. Debbie, who donated her kidney in 2005 to her husband Bob (Sandy and Tracie’s brother), said the environment could play a factor, but of course it could be genetic — even though while the time her husband was alive, most doctors assured the family their ailments were not guaranteed to be genetically related. “This particular group just has very weak kidneys,” she said. Doctors told them it was the luck of the draw that five family members could all have similar kidney diseases - but not the same ones. Until Sandy switched hospitals, she had never been told that this connection could be a genetic disposition to the disease. Debbie’s husband Bob was a painter, and in the teaching hospital that he frequented during his 25-year long battle with his illnesses, he was told there was a chance that his environment had influenced his conditions. The family said other common contributors to kidney-related illnesses are unresolved staph infections or even strep throat contractions. Consistently taking too much Advil or Motrin can also have the same effect. Sandy has been sick for three years. During this time, eight people have offered her their organs. Those are good odds, but every individual was turned down because the donors themselves were too sick — ranging from diabetes, high blood pressure to heart disease. “They weren’t well,” she said. “Illness is just running rampant because of where we live. Everyone’s had something wrong with them.” Sandy said she hasn’t quite processed the significance of today — that she’ll wake up with a new organ, and what she refers to as “new life,” thanks to a generous friend. The family put on a party the week of Sandy’s transplant to celebrate the phase of newness. “I’ll let you know how it feels when I wake up tomorrow,” she laughed. Her daughter Amber, however, knows exactly what it feels like to get a new kidney, having gone through the exact same thing almost ten years before her mother. She said while she celebrates that her mother is getting a transplant, it’s difficult for her to draw on those memories of “being on the other side of the bed” a decade before. “You literally wake up and you feel amazing,” Amber said of getting a transplant. “It’s hard to remember being on the other side of the bed,” she said, emotional. Evon-Moore, who lives in Florida with her family, said that unlike other chronic illnesses, kidney-related problems take a backseat in the spotlight. She said it is related to the fact that most dialysis patients or individuals with kidney disease don’t physically appear to be ill most of the time. She expressed frustration that kidney disease is not a cause that is publicly fought for or embraced. Sandy said many people have told her she doesn’t even look sick. Above all adversity, they are a family that values a sense of humor, joy, faith and reverence — and they take pride in finding jubilation amidst trial. In 1979, three members of their family were in the hospital at the same time. They capped off the tale by saying there was a wedding in the family that year. While Amber was sharing her transplant story, tears in her eyes, they jolted to a stop to remark on a big, beautiful cardinal looking into the dining room window. They erupted into joyous laughter, marveling at the little creature. Tracie jokingly noted all their friends think they want their kidneys. Sandy added this has legitimately happened to her. More laughter. If they could educate the world on kidney-related issues, they would have to write a book with the wisdom they’ve retained from going through diagnosis after diagnosis, bad news after bad news, surgery after surgery. On top of their desire to educate potential donors about the realities of what a contribution is, their other wisdom is a little less pragmatic and a whole lot warmer. The consensus was that each day should be filled with purpose, kindness and understanding for others — one, because you never know if you’re going to need somebody’s kidney, and two, because you never know what battles people are facing. “You should always be kind to everyone, because you never know when you’re going to need someone to save your life,” Sandy said, speaking of her long-time friend whose kidney she is receiving today. Sandy said that as friends, they naturally split apart as they grew older, but eventually reconnected. Sandy said her donor told her that she always remembered that Sandy was kind to her. Her friend asked that she not be identified. “From my first experience with Bob, and getting him back for so long, for an extra 30 years of life, all I can say is don’t sweat the small stuff.” Keefer said. “People just have no idea how fragile life is. That’s kind of how we operate. Turn the page.”
Review: Noah Gundersen at the Rex Theater, Sat., Feb. 3
How does that old phrase go again? The one about meeting your heroes? Oh, right. NEVER DO IT. EVER.
I once heard about a writer who was completely elated to meet Ellen DeGeneres. During the interview, Ellen didn’t even smile. That’s enough to scar you for one whole lifetime. I think I speak for all of us here in saying that I imagine Ellen smiling even as she’s cleaning out the garbage disposal.
Just like all those other sayings go, sometimes you simply can’t help yourself. It's easy to imagine that once you meet said hero, you’ll become best friends, and go explore cities and eat ice cream together in the style of an '80s-movie montage, while “We're Going to Be Friends” by the White Stripes plays tenderly in the background.
This is why I had to meet Noah Gundersen. Imagine all the ice-cream cones.
To continue reading about Gundersen's performance, click here.
Governor Wolf Pays visit to Center for Media Innovation
In an effort to hear from constituents and directly address gerrymandering and redistricting issues, Gov. Tom Wolf brought his non-partisan listening session to the Center for Media Innovation (CMI) last Thursday at 2 p.m. “I’m actually here at Point Park because the president and the folks at Point Park were gracious enough to allow me to make this a venue,” Wolf said during the event. “I don’t have a lot of time to gather information, and I’m trying to do it as fast as I can.”
To continue reading about Wolf's visit, click here.
America’s most livable city must be livable for everyone
Pittsburgh has long basked in national accolades for being America’s “Most Livable City.” This title is likely to have been earned thanks to the city’s rich history, vibrant dynamics and inhabitants and relatively affordable housing. For some residents, however, thanks to gentrification, or what many refer to as “hipster economics,” this is not a reality at all.
To continue reading about Pittsburgh gentrification, click here.
“To my friend:” letter writing club pens messages to families of Squirrel Hill massacre victims Campus Cursive brings handwritten hope to Squirrel Hill
Students who entered Lawrence Hall lobby last Tuesday night were directed towards a corner table spilling over with colorful stationery. Two bags of pens rested on the table next to a thick stack of notecards, already written and ready for mailing. The only instructions given to those entering the space were to “write like you’re writing to a friend.” After the Squirrel Hill synagogue shooting that took 11 lives and shook Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, students from an on-campus letter writing initiative called Campus Cursive joined together and made a decision to do what they do best – write letters. “We made a general decision about this as a club, and posted on the crisis Facebook page and said we want to spread some love in this time of darkness,” Allison Hritz, president of Campus Cursive, said about organizing the letter-writing initiative.
To continue reading about Campus Cursive's letter drive, click here.
From Addict to Artist to Adviser: David Wadsworth’s Miracle
A typical 20-year-old is looking toward life with a newness - welcoming the opportunities of adulthood, an approaching professional life — topped off with the blind optimism of youth. Cars are being leased, apartments are being rented, degrees are being earned. 20 is an exciting year.
When David Wadsworth was 20, he was checking himself into rehab. “I did not know myself,” Wadsworth said. “The life I led by myself was total emptiness. I was having such awful thoughts of darkness that I really knew what it meant to have separation from God. I felt so separated from all the good things that I had ever experienced before.”
To learn more about David and how Light of Life helped him live a better life, click here.
Bands Wage War Against Technical Difficulties to Deliver Sludgy Goodness
It was a gutsy move on PromoWest’s part to book two guitar bands to fill Stage AE’s Halloween bill Tuesday. With the past two October 31st shows drawing mainstream crowds with acts like The 1975 and Icona Pop, it was a shot in the dark to bring in noisy Canadian duo Japandroids alongside Cleveland garage rockers, Cloud Nothings. Initially, the concert drew a modest crowd for an AE show, but the house was full of costumed adolescents and adults alike before the clock struck midnight and the carriage turned back into a pumpkin. Dylan Baldi’s amp wasn’t working and he was trying really hard to fill the quietude. “Where’s everybody from?” he would ask.
To read more about the Japandroids' Halloween performance, click here.
Globe’s Point – Pittsburgh Strong as Steel
As we sit down to write this editorial, the day’s copy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sits propped in front of us. It is inspiration we are looking for – for sanity. For clarity. For the right words to say. The harder and harder we try, the more we realize there aren’t any; yet there are so, so many.
Read on about the aftermath of the Squirrel Hill shooting here.