McCarthy Vahey to push against tobacco use in 2025, face federal challenges

CT Examiner – Monday, December 30, 2024
By Robert Storace

HARTFORD – With the start of the legislative session a week away, Public Health Committee Co-Chair State Rep. Cristin McCarthy Vahey, D-Fairfield, told CT Examiner that her committee is hoping in 2025 to pass major legislation addressing tobacco safety while staying on top of any legislative challenges posed by President Donald Trump’s second term in office.

A former social worker, McCarthy Vahey said the 2024 legislative session was a mixed bag. Several high-priority bills, including ones expanding telehealth and improving healthcare worker safety, passed. Other bills that were not signed into law, like one requiring lactation consultants — there are about 250 in the state — to be licensed, will be brought up again in 2025.

“I’m proud that we were able to achieve results in so many different areas,” McCarthy Vahey said of the 37-member committee, which she co-chairs with State Sen. Saud Anwar, D- South Windsor. Fourteen of the 42 bills that came out of the Health Committee were signed into law by Gov. Ned Lamont.

McCarthy Vahey, who has been a lawmaker representing the 133rd House District for 10 years and will be entering her second year as Public Health co-chair, said she was proud of passing Senate Bill 1. That bill is aimed at improving care for healthcare workers on the job and providing a safe work environment. It came about following the much-publicized 2023 murder of visiting nurse Joyce Grayson. The suspect in the case was a mental health patient of Grayson’s.

“We were able to address one of the main concerns that we started with in the session, which is the safety of our home healthcare workers,” McCarthy Vahey told CT Examiner in a recent interview from the Capitol.

Among other things, the bill requires home health care agencies to obtain each client’s psychiatric history, as well as any history of violence, substance abuse and domestic abuse. Each agency is also mandated to provide staff with safety training and a wearable GPS that allows staff to contact local police by pressing a button.

A bill passed during the 2024 session extending a provision for telehealth until June 30, 2027 was also a major victory, McCarthy Vahey said.

“In public health, the three main overarching guiding principles are accessibility, affordability, and equity. Telehealth is something that helps us address all three of those things,” McCarthy Vahey said.

The telehealth bill, among other things, sets conditions for providing telehealth services, including the use of appropriate technology, access to medical care and adherence to the standard of care. It also extends the inclusion of certain out-of-state mental and behavioral health care providers until June 30, 2025, and requires them to register with the state Department of Health.

“We were able to make changes that were largely negotiated across industries with professionals, with stakeholders,” McCarthy Vahey said. “If we had not done something with our legislation, people would have lost the opportunity to have access to those telehealth services. We were able to both address the timeline issue and also expand [the services]….. In some sense, it’s the Wild West because it’s online and people can be anywhere. We wanted to make sure we were maintaining the levels of professionalism and the kinds of requirements we have in Connecticut, but, at the same time, make sure people had access.”

Other successes in the 2024 session, McCarthy Vahey said, dealt with both nurse licensure compacts and social worker licensure compacts. The nurse licensure compact allows nurses with a multistate license to practice in any part of the state. The bill also sets forth conditions for obtaining and maintaining a multistate license, including education qualifications and examination requirements.

The social worker licensure compact is designed to increase access to social work services and reduce the burden of multiple licenses and enhance state cooperation, among others.

“They [bills] basically make it easier for people to obtain licensure in compact states,” McCarthy Vahey said. “So, as a former military spouse, for example, if I were licensed in another state and moved to Connecticut with my spouse, I would then be able to have access to an easier process.”

Looking ahead to the 2025 session, McCarthy Vahey said tobacco education is a top priority and, she said, it’s personal.

“I got interested in the issue because my grandfather died of emphysema when I was 15,” she said. “He smoked and smoked and he had quit many, many years before he died. But, watching him suffer like that, as a teenager, was very impactful and why I started fundraising for the American Lung Association.”

Tobacco is “costing our state over $2 billion a year in related health care expenses,” McCarthy Vahey said. “We need to better address this on a prevention level and we are planning to partner with all the advocates, the Attorney General’s office and [other interested parties] to try and address tobacco prevention.”

An all-out marketing campaign is a possibility, she said.

“We are working with the people who are the experts in the field to figure out what those data and evidence-based practices are and then, being strategic about what we think can actually pass here in this building,” McCarthy Vahey said.

As President-Elect Donald Trump prepares to take office on Jan. 20, McCarthy Vahey said it’s imperative “to be aware and be prepared to be nimble in terms of responding to what the people of Connecticut want, which may be different than what the new administration wants.”

McCarthy Vahey said she will be watching closely what comes out of the federal office of Health and Human Services, especially if Robert Kennedy Jr. is confirmed by the U.S. Senate to run the agency. In past comments, Kennedy has been a skeptic of vaccines and their use.

“My biggest concern with RFK Jr. is the misinformation that he has shared related to vaccines, especially childhood vaccines,” McCarthy Vahey said.

McCarthy Vahey said Public Health was one of the more bipartisan committees in the General Assembly, and described her work with Republican members as collaborative.

“We have a tremendous working relationship in Public Health,” she said. “We are able to have robust conversations on a lot of issues and we truly collaborate. We are very fortunate.”

State Rep. Nicole Klarides-Ditria, R-Seymour and one of two Republican ranking members on Public Health, told CT Examiner that McCarthy Vahey has mastered the art of compromise and works well with the Republicans on the committee.

“She’s always willing to listen and – with her background as a social worker – that has helped her in always wanting to bring people together to come to some form of compromise,” Klarides-Ditria said. “That’s also where I think my strengths are…. Her [McCarthy Vahey] wealth of knowledge and her ability to lead her caucus serves her well. She has the respect of her caucus and of [Speaker of the House] Matt Ritter. Matt believes in her and so that has helped her.”

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