Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears to be gearing up for potentially substantial changes in vaccine policies, specifically with respect to the federal government’s messaging and the composition of the advisory panel responsible for making recommendations on vaccination schedules.
Kennedy is planning to remove several members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices due to what he views as conflicts of interest. ACIP advises the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on which vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration should be used; for example, recommending which groups of people ought to be vaccinated, at what doses and when. ACIP’s guidance is not binding, though CDC almost always follows it and provides recommendations to the public on what is to be included in the United States adult and childhood immunization schedules.
The Secretary of HHS can hire or replace ACIP committee members, which may lead to new sets of CDC recommendations. ACIP’s first scheduled meeting since Trump was inaugurated was postponed this week. It’s not clear at this time exactly what this postponement signals, though in light of other changes within HHS, it may be a foreboding.
For example, the CDC has been ordered to shelve promotions it developed for multiple vaccines, including a “Wild to Mild” advertising campaign urging people to get vaccinated against influenza. Secretary of HHS Kennedy says he wants advertisements that incorporate a more robust version of “informed consent.” Informed consent is the principle that people should be notified of all the risks, as well as benefits, of any medical intervention they receive or any therapeutic they are prescribed. The Wild to Mild ads emphasizes the harm-reducing functions of vaccines, particularly for vulnerable populations like pregnant women, young children and the immunocompromised. Evidently, Kennedy wants messages that are more focused on potential adverse events associated with vaccines.
And just this week the FDA canceled a meeting of its flu vaccine advisors. The panel was set to convene to discuss the composition of the 2025-2026 influenza vaccine.*
Kennedy has previously said that he is concerned about the pharmaceutical industry’s close relationship with government agencies and the entities such as ACIP that advise them. But it’s unclear what Kennedy means when current ACIP members include several academics, a chief medical officer of a community health center, a state public health higher-up and the owner of a family medicine practice. (We reached out to Kennedy’s office for comment, but did not receive a reply.)
The changes at HHS are taking place against the backdrop of a large measles outbreak, which began in West Texas and thus far has claimed the life of a child and hospitalized 19 others. Practically all the people who’ve contracted measles are unvaccinated. Yet Kennedy seems to be downplaying the situation in Texas and New Mexico, suggesting that such outbreaks are not unusual.
Kennedy’s vaccine-skeptic views are well-known. And while he told the podcaster Lex Fridman in 2023 that some vaccines “are probably averting more problems than they’re causing,” he also maintained that “there’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.” Kennedy recently informed employees within his department that he vows to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule that prevents measles, polio and other infectious diseases.
All of this doesn’t come as a surprise. Kennedy has invariably been outspoken on vaccines and what he sees as public health agencies’ “suppression” of controversial treatments. Just prior to the November election, Kennedy posted on X, warning the FDA that its “aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, [and] hydroxychloroquine” was about to end.
The drugs ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were embroiled in a culture war during the COVID-19 pandemic that pitted unproven treatments against proven measures, such as vaccines. Kennedy defends himself as merely wanting placebo-controlled trials prior to licensure and no vaccine mandates. However, the vaccines he rails against are typically subject to such clinical trials. Furthermore, arguably the mandates Kennedy opposes, which have been in place since the 1960s, have helped to contribute to a dramatic decline in childhood infectious diseases.
From smallpox inoculations—which began in the late 18th century and ended when the disease was eradicated in the 1970s—to mumps, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, polio and measles immunizations, vaccinations have saved millions of lives and prevented crippling and life-threatening illnesses from occurring.
To illustrate, mass vaccination programs with single or combination—measles, mumps and rubella—shots began in the 1960s and quickly suppressed the spread of measles in most developed countries. The measles vaccine is “sterilizing,” which means it not only prevents illness, but also transmission.
Neither the Secretary of HHS nor the CDC director can unilaterally ban vaccines. But they can alter the CDC’s messaging, hire and fire ACIP committee members and revise vaccine scheduling. The fact that the HHS secretary and probable CDC director, nominee Dave Weldon, have aligned views could facilitate the process of transforming vaccine policy.
A bill which Weldon sponsored sought to undo what he saw as a conflict of interest entailed by CDC being both a promoter of vaccines and an evaluator of their safety. This echoes Kennedy’s opinion on the topic.
Should Weldon be confirmed, he will be making the decisions regarding whether a vaccine should be recommended to the public. Negative guidance from the CDC director could affect insurance coverage because insurers are only obligated to cover vaccines that have been recommended by the agency.
* At the same time, the CDC joined a flu vaccine video conference meeting last month led by the World Health Organization, despite a planned U.S. withdrawal from the WHO.
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