Dr. Jessica Weisz, a pediatrician in D.C., has seen more and more parents who are skeptical about vaccinating their children.She cares for about 15 families a day, and said that what used to be monthly questions about vaccine safety have become weekly ones.
But, she emphasized, that was not yet the norm.
“Overwhelmingly, most parents and caregivers want their children to be vaccinated,” Weisz, who is also president of the D.C. chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), told TPM.
Last Friday, the Washington Post published an article outlining plans for new childhood vaccine guidelines coming out of the Department of Health and Human Services. The guidelines would recommend fewer vaccines and encourage a “shared clinical decision making” model which calls on parents and doctors to discuss guidance for most shots in the absence of clear guidance from the federal governement. The U.S. reportedly plans to follow an immunization schedule similar to that of Denmark.
Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for HHS, did not confirm the plans in a comment to the Washington Post. “Unless you hear it from HHS directly, this is pure speculation,” Nixon told the Post. But 2025 has seen federal health agencies repeatedly pare back vaccine recommendations while federal officials cast doubt publcily on the efficacy.
The competing narratives — medical professionals widely endorse decades of science supporting vaccine safety while the federal government under President Donald Trump does not — creates a confusing environment that ulitmately shifts long-standing medical recommendation practices from the federal government and onto parents, individual practitioners, and medical associations.
“The kinds of statements that come from our health officials are unlike anything we’ve seen in the recent history of vaccination in the United States,” said Jason Schwartz, an associate professor of health policy at Yale. ”And all of that will undoubtedly cause alarm among parents.”
After a piecemeal assault on childhood vaccines, the new, reported planned guidance from the federal government concentrates ascientific recommendations in a way medical professionals who spoke to TPM fear will harm children, confuse parents, burden health care providers, and create unpredictable ripple effects impacting vaccine manufacturers and insurance coverage.
“If we are shifting policy away from a standardized vaccination schedule, that affects who needs vaccines, how much [vaccine manufacturers] make, who pays for it, [and] is it universally available to everyone,” said Weisz.
There have for months been rumblings about official changes coming down from HHS to the childhood vaccination schedule. Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaxxer, in June booted all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine panel, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, and installed his own disciples. Those new members set off altering immunization schedules and recommendations, eliminating clarity where they did not outright nix recommended vaccinations, and sowing distrust in vaccine safety. In November, the CDC stunned the medical and research community when it updated a webpage about autism and vaccines to imply that vaccines can cause autism, a claim that has been roundly debunked.
The page, updated on Nov. 19, lists key points that include, “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim,” and “Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.”
A flood of medical professional organizations went on the record at the time refuting the government’s claims. More than three dozen organizations issued a joint statement decrying the use of “taxpayer-funded health agencies” to “spread harmful rumors.”
“The conclusion is clear and unambiguous: There’s no link between vaccines and autism,” Dr. Susan J. Kressly, national AAP president, said in a statement.
Then, in early December, ACIP voted to undo the hepatitis B immunization recommendations for newborn babies, reversing a policy that had been in place for more than 30 years.
“I think it’s gonna be dangerous in terms of the fall out for pediatric vaccines,” Arthur Caplan, a renowned bioethicist and the founding director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, told TPM.
“Parents are made nervous when what they consider trusted government authorities start to attack that scehdule start to raise phony concerns about risks,” Caplan said. “There are a lot of people who just see CDC or HHS and say ‘I trust that.’”
Schwartz who studies vaccine policy specifically, described an environment where well-meaning parents who want to do what’s best for their child’s health are driving blind, with competing medical claims being made by various authority figures.
“It’s really important to remember that the vast majority of parents who are confronted with decisions around vaccinating their children do not have deeply held, strong beliefs questioning the safety of vaccines,” Schwartz told TPM. “Instead, they’re trying to figure out how to navigate this landscape that seems contested.”
Most parents aren’t partisan actors, said Schwartz, but aren’t as confident in the safety of shots for their children because of federal policy changes. And the CDC’s new emphasis on a shared clinical decision making model, said Schwartz, both falsely implies pediatricians weren’t already talking to parents about vaccine choices and will likely take up more time in physicians’ already busy schedules.
Caplan is part of a yet-to-be released study wherein researchers are finding that Kennedy’s unsubstantiated claims from September linking Tylenol to autism has already led “a significant number” of pregnant women to cut back on using the over-the-counter drug.
“I may think Kennedy is a kook and a chronic liar, but that doesn’t mean that that’s how his messages are perceived by many Americans,” Caplan said.
Still, as Weisz’s anecdotal evidence from patients in the liberal DMV area suggests, survey after survey has continued to show more parents than not still trust childhood immunization safety.
An October survey from KFF and the Washington Post of more than 2,700 parents found 81% support public school vaccine requirements. Ninety percent of parents supported vaccines for the measles, mumps and rubella, while a much smaller majority, 56%, supported vaccinating children against the flu. Only 43% of parents in that study said it was important for children to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
In November, Pew Research Center published a study finding 71% U.S. parents were at least somewhat confident in vaccine safety testing and 68% were at least somewhat confident in the childhood vaccine schedule.
Caplan has found, as did the Pew study, that beliefs about vaccine safety cuts along political and class lines, with Republicans and respondants who have recieved less traditional education trusting vaccines less. Even still, a poll of parents in deep red Georgia conducted in late October and early November by Emory University found that 88% of parents in the state believe vaccines are safe.
The Emory study delved into parent understanding about insurer coverage of vaccines, and that’s where things got murky. Less than one-third of parents in Georgia knew that insurance companies generally follow ACIP recommendations when deciding what vaccines to cover.
For now, Schwartz said insurers are still required to cover vaccines because the federal government has left immunization recommendations in a gray area that doesn’t outright recommend the vaccines, but doesn’t unrecommend them either. The shared decision making model continues to require insurers to cover vaccinations. Still, the Washington Post cited a 2016 study that found most pediatricians weren’t aware of that. Nearly 10 years later, uncertainty persists.
“I think there’s still a lot of questions moving forward on what insurance companies will cover,” said Weisz.
