The Hill News

Recently, Virginia passed a law requiring schools to stock epinephrine and authorizing school staff to administer it to any child believed to be suffering an anaphylactic reaction. Known as “Amarria’s Law,” the bill was inspired by an incident in January in which first-grader Amarria Johnson died after an anaphylactic reaction to eating a peanut. Sadly, Amarria’s death was entirely preventable, but her school did not have an epinephrine auto-injector on hand to save her life.     

Today, only two states â€" Nebraska and Virginia â€" have laws requiring schools to stock epinephrine. In a country where six million children live with food allergies, we ought to have a national strategy to make sure life-saving epinephrine is available in our schools. 

There are no Republican or Democratic solutions to this problem, only a human solution based in compassion and common sense. That’s why we have partnered to introduce H.R. 3627, the “Sch! ool Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act,” to encourage states to adopt the policy enacted recently in Virginia following Amarria’s tragic death. Identical legislation was put forward in the Senate by Illinois Senators Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk.

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