Moves Made by HHS Raise Concerns for Public Health Experts

Certain moves made by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over the past week have raised concerns among public health experts. CIDRAP has the news.

One such move was the “postponement of the upcoming meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which was scheduled for next week and had votes on several vaccines on the agenda. ACIP holds full-committee public meetings at least three times a year to review evidence on vaccines and vote on new recommendations.” The CDC is not required to accept the recommendations of ACIP advisors, but “the agency has traditionally adopted those recommendations and based adult and child immunization schedules on them, as have groups like the American Academy of Pediatricians. ACIP recommendations also play a role in determining which vaccines are covered by health insurers.”

The postponement is “adding to fears that Kennedy, a longtime critic of vaccines who in the past has accused ACIP members of conflict of interest, could make changes to the group. Voting members of ACIP are appointed by the HHS secretary and serve overlapping terms of up to 4 years. Reporting by Politico indicates that ACIP is among the advisory committees that Kennedy is targeting for changes, and there has been concern that he may appoint people with anti-vaccine views to the panel.”

CDC’s promotional campaigns for vaccines are also being changed. According to a report from Stat, Kennedy “wants future vaccine campaigns to promote the idea of ‘informed consent’ in vaccine decision-making. In addition, both the Advisory Committee on Long COVID and the CMS Health Equity Advisory Committee have now been terminated by a Trump executive order.