Huff Medication Bill Passes Committee, Heads to Full Senate

Proposed legislation that would enable school employees to give students seizure medication in an emergency recently received the green light to go to the state Senate floor next for a vote.

Senate Bill 161, authored by state Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, cleared its most recent hurdle last week when the Senate Appropriations Committee voted in favor of the measure.  That 8-0 vote enables the bill to move forward so that it can be considered by the entire Senate.

“I’m grateful for the bi-partisan support this bill received, which allowed it to move off the Appropriations Committee Suspense File and to the Senate Floor,” Huff said in a statement. “I’m pleased that committee members recognized that SB 161 has the unqualified support of physicians, school districts and thousands of parents of children who suffer from epilepsy.”

Under the proposed law, school employees who volunteer would be trained to give students a pre-dosed preparation of Diastat Acudial, a medication used to treat prolonged seizures.  The bill, which has the support of the Epilepsy Foundation of California, the California Association of School Business Officials, the Health Officers Association of California among other groups, mirrors a similar proposed law Huff championed last year that did not pass. 

However, not everyone is onboard.

The California Teachers Association opposed Huff’s previous bill, citing liability for staff and teachers and student privacy as reasons, and also does not favor the reintroduced version.

One of the concerns the 295,000-member group expressed when the previous bill was introduced had to do with the way that Diastat is administered. 

The drug must be injected into a child’s rectum by syringe, according to diastat.com.

Frank Wells, a California Teachers Association spokesman, said in March that the organization opposes non-medical personnel doing certain medical procedures. Under the strain of budget cuts, school nurses are in short supply, but they have found ways to meet the needs of students they serve and to rapidly respond to emergencies, he said.

Teachers and staff also might feel undue pressure to volunteer, he said.

“We believe the legislation may be well intentioned, but it actually places students at risk,” he said.  “Seizure type recognition and treatment is not to be taken lightly.”

Huff said that the pre-dosed diazepam gel is the only out-of-hospital treatment that has earned the Food and Drug Administration approval for the treatment of prolonged seizures.  The drug must be administered in a matter of minutes after a seizure starts to be effective, he said.

For more than ten years, school teachers and staff were trained and able to administer the medication in an emergency, but two years ago, the Board of Registered Nursing ruled that school nurses were not authorized to train or supervise anyone to give the Diastat injection, Huff said.

The change in policy and concerns about delayed treatment for children having seizures are why Huff was approached to author the proposed law, he said.

“Parents with children who suffer from epilepsy are told they have to be on call at all hours to immediately come to school to administer Diastat, or in some cases schools call 911 in an emergency,” he said.  “This results in treatment delays that place children with epilepsy in extreme danger.”