RFK Jr. could further deter childhood vaccinations as U.S. rates fall

The nation’s recent top health official could further erode already falling U.S. vaccination rates against once-common childhood diseases, a development that comes as a growing measles outbreak has led to the primary U.S. death from the disease in a decade.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a outstanding vaccine skeptic, now leads the Department of Health and Human Services and wields enormous power over the federal agencies that regulate vaccines and set shot recommendations. 

Kennedy tried to distance himself from his previous views during his Senate confirmation hearings, claiming that he is not “anti-vaccine” and wouldn’t make it “difficult or discourage people from taking” routine shots for measles and polio. 

But some health policy experts said his early moves as HHS Secretary are concerning and suggest that he could undermine immunizations in other, less direct ways, which could increase the chance of youngsters catching preventable diseases.

“The steps that he’s taken up to now appear to be in keeping with his views of skepticism about vaccines and their safety, of wanting to permit for fogeys to not get their children vaccinated. It’s all things he’s championed,” said Josh Michaud, associate director of world health policy at KFF. “There is likely to be more dominoes to fall coming.”

Kennedy has said he’ll review the childhood vaccination schedule, and is reportedly preparing to remove and replace members of external committees that advise the federal government on vaccine approvals and other key public health decisions, amongst other efforts. Some experts said he could also amplify data highlighting the risks of vaccines, promote unfounded claims about shots and undermine legal protections for vaccine makers. 

If rates drop much more, there may very well be major consequences, equivalent to renewed outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illnesses in certain communities.

“Inside the following couple of years, we could see major drops in childhood vaccination rates,” Lawrence Gostin, professor of public health law at Georgetown University, told CNBC. “He has all of the powers he must sow public distrust in vaccines. He has a history of doing that and he has a desire to do it.”

“This may lead to significant outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases throughout America, with the disproportionate impact on red states that President Trump carried within the 2024 election,” Gostin added. 

Kennedy has an extended track record of constructing misleading and false statements in regards to the safety of shots. He has claimed they’re linked to autism despite many years of studies that debunk that association. Kennedy can be the founding father of the nonprofit Kid’s Health Defense, essentially the most well-funded anti-vaccine organization within the U.S. In a government ethics agreement in January, he said he stopped serving as chairman or chief legal counsel for the organization as of December.

But vaccines have saved the lives of greater than 1.1 million children within the U.S. and saved Americans $540 billion in direct health-care costs during the last three many years, in response to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research released in August.

States and native jurisdictions set vaccine requirements for college children, however the federal government has a longstanding system for approving and recommending shots for the general public. That features creating the childhood vaccination schedule, which recommends when children should receive certain shots. It’s utilized by states, pediatricians and oldsters. 

The Department of Health and Human Services didn’t immediately reply to CNBC’s request for comment.

However the share of kindergarten children who’re up so far on their vaccinations has dipped for the reason that pandemic, in response to data collected and aggregated annually by the CDC from state and native immunization programs. Lower than 93% of kindergarteners had received all state required vaccines within the 2023-2024 school yr, data shows.

Exemptions from school vaccination requirements, particularly non-medical exemptions, have also increased, in response to the CDC. The share of U.S. children claiming an exemption from a number of shots rose from 2.5% within the 2019-2020 school yr to three.3% within the 2023-2024 school yr, the very best national exemption rate so far. Nearly all of that increase was driven by non-medical exemptions, equivalent to religious or personal belief reasons.

That decrease appears consistent with the general public’s perception of childhood immunizations. A Gallup survey released in August found only 40% of Americans said they considered childhood vaccines extremely vital, down from 58% in 2019 and 64% in 2001. 

The general decline is fueled partly by vaccine skepticism, a trend that “actually existed far before the pandemic,” KFF’s Michaud said.

Vaccine hesitancy and the anti-vaccine movement have been around globally for many years. They are sometimes intertwined with political, moral and spiritual ideas across the rights of a person versus the community, the bounds of presidency power over bodily autonomy, mistrust of medical institutions and misinformation about shot safety and efficacy. 

The politicization of the pandemic only fueled more doubts about vaccinations. 

It created a partisan divide on the general public’s acceptance of the Covid vaccine, in response to Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases. Social media and public figures amplified misinformation about Covid jabs, and a few of those “falsehoods about Covid shots spilled over to an extent to other kinds of vaccinations,” he said. 

“There was a really precipitous drop [in vaccination rates] right when the pandemic hit, in those first few months afterwards,” O’Leary said. “And we never really completely caught up.” 

O’Leary noted that the overwhelming majority of oldsters on each side of the political spectrum proceed to vaccinate their kids. 

Still, surveys suggest that the partisan division on immunizations has deepened lately. In 2024, 63% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters said childhood vaccinations were “extremely vital,” in comparison with just 26% of Republicans and GOP leaners, in response to the August Gallup survey. 

Five years earlier, enthusiasm was just barely higher among the many Democratic group at 67%, and double amongst Republican respondents at 52%. 

There are “actually political ideologies which are driving vaccine policy in certain areas of the country,” which has a “clear downstream impact on vaccination levels,” said Dr. Neil Maniar, a public health professor at Northeastern University. 

Over three-quarters of U.S. states, or 39, had vaccination rates for the MMR shot below the “Healthy People 2030” goal rate of 95% in the course of the 2023-2024 school yr. That refers back to the level needed to forestall community transmission of measles, a highly contagious and deadly virus. 

The information implies that roughly 280,000 school children were unvaccinated and unprotected against measles during that faculty yr, in response to the CDC. MMR vaccination rates amongst kindergarteners vary across states, starting from a low of around 80% in Idaho to a high of greater than 98% in West Virginia. 

Moss noted that clusters of unvaccinated people inside a particular community increase the chance of disease outbreak. 

“That is where you are going to get these larger outbreaks like we’re seeing in Texas right away with measles,” Moss said. 

A baby who wasn’t vaccinated died within the outbreak in rural West Texas, state officials said in late February, the primary U.S. death from the disease since 2015. The childhood vaccination rate for measles in Gaines County, the epicenter of the present outbreak in Texas, is slightly below 82%.

A second patient, an unvaccinated adult in Latest Mexico, tested positive for measles after death, state officials said Thursday.

Kennedy last week said shots protect communities from measles, but emphasized that the choice to vaccinate “is a private one.” He also pushed unconventional treatment regimens for measles, including cod liver oil, which is wealthy in vitamin A. 

The federal government postponed a gathering of vaccine advisors to the CDC and a separate meeting of advisors to the Food and Drug Administration, the latter of which is crucial to determining the flu strains in next season’s shots. It’s unclear why the meetings were canceled or after they might be rescheduled.

One “clear step” Kennedy can even take to undermine vaccinations is removing members of those advisory panels that shape the federal government’s shot recommendations, including which jabs are covered for free of charge by various kinds of insurance, in response to Georgetown’s Gostin. 

Several reports have said Kennedy plans to interchange members whom he perceives to have “conflicts of interest,” though it’s unclear how many individuals might be outed or when. 

Gostin called conflicts of interest one in every of Kennedy’s “code words” for “simply purging hard working, experienced scientists from advisory committees and replacing them with those which are more skeptical of shots.” All HHS agencies and their advisory panels have rigorous policies for conflicts of interest, and there have been no related issues for years, he noted. 

Kennedy’s shake-up of advisory committees could produce “bogus recommendations” that highlight the harms fairly than the advantages of shots, in response to Gostin. He said those recommendations could influence governors, legislatures and college boards in red states, which could adopt policies that reduce childhood immunizations and “create wide-open opt outs of shots.” 

Those recommendations could also create greater distrust within the CDC and Trump administration amongst scientists and public health experts, including Gostin himself, he said.

“It should have a longer-term corrosive effect on the worth of science in America, which is already under severe attack,” he said. 

Kennedy can be reviewing the childhood immunization schedule. Experts said that may lead to removing recommendations for certain vaccines or changing their suggested use from “routine” – when the default approach is to vaccinate – to more of a person selection guided by discussions with a health-care provider. 

The hope is that officials on the state and native level influence policy or implement practices to drive higher vaccination rates, said Northeastern’s Maniar. State and native governments may have to “expand the work they do” in some cases to “make up lost ground” and advocate for vaccinations, he added.

Kennedy is reportedly shelving promotions for a wide range of shots, including a campaign touting seasonal flu jabs. He wanted the CDC’s advertisements to advertise the concept of “informed consent” in vaccine decision-making as an alternative, STAT News reported in February. That refers to giving patients vital information, including possible risks or advantages of a medical treatment, equivalent to antagonistic events related to shots. 

Experts have said while informed consent is essential, shifting the framing of advertisements for shots that the CDC has long beneficial to focus more on the potential risks could undermine people’s willingness to get vaccinated.

“When a parent exercises informed consent to not have their child immunized with measles, it actually puts that child in danger, however it puts every child in that faculty with them in danger,” Gostin said. 

Kennedy would wish approval from Congress to vary the prevailing legal liability protections in place for vaccine makers, but he could still undermine them in other ways, experts said. HHS’ National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program currently pays patients injured by standard childhood vaccines and shields drugmakers from litigation. 

As HHS secretary, Kennedy can remove or add to the list of vaccines and injuries included and covered by that program, Michaud said. Any changes to the list could change some liability protections for vaccine makers, potentially spurring a wave of litigation over alleged injuries from the shots, he added.