Sounds like we’ll be hearing a lot about aluminum in vaccines next. Great resource from the team at CHOP: www.chop.edu/vaccine-educ...

Glad to serve on a new advisory committee to the Connecticut Dept. of Public Health focusing on vaccination. Our first meeting today discussed changing ACIP recs., the resulting confusion, and the many challenges providers face discussing and delivering vaccines. Video: ct-n.com/ctnplayer.as...

Our YSPH Communications office asked me to do a Q&A about the ACIP meeting. (Focusing on the actual outcomes and votes, not all of the process chaos and dubious scientific content.) A shortened version will be posted on our website sometime this week, but here it is now, all 1400 words of it:

Our YSPH Communications office asked me to do a Q&A about the ACIP meeting. (Focusing on the actual outcomes and votes, not all of the process chaos and dubious scientific content.) A shortened version will be posted on our website sometime this week, but here it is now, all 1400 words of it:

Only two possibilities here, both of them mind-boggling: an ACIP member genuinely doesn’t know what a vaccine ‘standing order’ means (Vaccine Policy 101), or he does and has no problem spreading falsehoods.

Earlier this summer, I wrote about how a shift toward greater use of individual (‘shared’) decision-making recommendations from ACIP seemed likely given what we heard and saw from federal health officials all year long re: vaccines and their view of the role of government public health agencies…

Some background on the history, role, and complexity of shared clinical decision-making recommendations for vaccines, given that’s where we seem to be now re: COVID vaccination www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Yes! Exactly the types of affordability/access divides that VFC was created in ‘94 to address. (And it’s done so!) The immediate issue here is a pretty niche one—15% of families who opted for a non-preferred option for 1 dose of 1 vaccine—but likely a harbinger of more consequential changes to come.

Open mic picked up someone saying “You’re an idiot!” as ACIP member Retsef Levi was speaking. So things are going great in vaccine policy.

A last-minute surprise vote by ACIP to table indefinitely their vote on removing the HepB birth dose rec. A pleasant surprise (for the time being, at least…)

And they are starting today’s meeting by cleaning up this mess from yesterday. Not a surprise.

And it means kids who have CHIP through Medicaid won’t have it covered because the first vote affected CMS. So you have all different kinds of access for no reason created by people who didn’t know what was going on.

None of the ACIP understand that they just voted to maintain VFC coverage for the MMRV vaccine for kids under 4 (50% of US kids) through one vote—a good thing!—while removing the overall recommendation for any kid to get it (and thus ending ACA coverage requirement for kids with private insurance).

An opportune time to promote this virtual event coming up in a few weeks, hosted by the folks at @busph.bsky.social. (Too bad there’s not much to discuss!) Details and registration: publichealthconversation.org/conversation...

Big day for vaccine policy related social media posts from health policy professors named Schwartz

Two perennial strategies of the most strident critics of vaccines: suggesting all sorts of specific studies that haven’t been done but need to be, and discounting any study that doesn’t support their views as either methodologically flawed or COI-biased. We’re being bombarded with both today at ACIP

Another first in my ~20 years of watching ACIP meetings: committee members asking questions to CDC subject-matter experts as if they were attorneys cross-examining witnesses. Asking questions to which they have their own answers ready, no matter how CDC responds.

As ACIP discusses doing away with the HepB birth dose, reminded of some papers I found in ACIP’s archives at NARA in the lead-up to the recommendation in 1990-91. US vaccination quite literally turning back the clock these days.

Sigh, ACIP members asking questions during the meeting that reveal they aren’t aware of the most basic aspects of the Vaccines for Children program, one of the most important implications of their recommendations and votes. www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Several good moves on COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, access, and coverage here in CT portal.ct.gov/governor/new...

The country’s defensive shields against disease are shattering, in ways that could take decades, even generations, to mend, Katherine J. Wu writes:

Setting aside the enormous consequences to public health, this is all just so sad. And it would have been literally unfathomable when I started studying ACIP ~20 years ago. (Or for that matter, unimaginable even just one year ago.)

Come see Michael Osterholm, Wendy Parmet, Rekha Lakshmanan, Jason Schwartz, and Nahid Bhadelia talk about the public health consequences of anti-vaccine politics, policy, and public opinion at @busph.bsky.social !

User fees have had a critical role in funding @fda.gov since 1992. In our new @nejm.org Perspective, we outline the history and intent of PDUFA, & suggest potential reforms to the PDUFA VIII negotiation process to enable transparency & promote patient-centeredness (1/3)

Happy to join my friends @heatherhhoward.bsky.social and @celinegounder.com for this conversation!

Joined @npr.org’s All Things Considered for a conversation about all of the turmoil in vaccine policy these days, trust in vaccines, and the critical role of pediatricians now (and always) in vaccine decision-making by parents. www.npr.org/2025/07/07/n...

Great wrap-up of this first chapter of the new ACIP era and what it suggests lies ahead. www.statnews.com/2025/06/26/c...

"They're signaling interest in revisiting long-settled questions around vaccine safety, opening up issues that have been focal points of critics of vaccines for decades," Prof. @jasonlschwartz.bsky.social told NPR.

One gets the sense that a few of these new ACIP members will never look at a vaccine’s safety and effectiveness data and find it to be sufficient to support its widespread use. (Definitely not all of them, but some.)

Kudos to the AAP for taking this step and for speaking with such clarity. Exactly the kind of approach and focus I outlined in NEJM last week.

My new book, Absolutely Essential, is now available for pre-order on the MIT Press website. mitpress.mit.edu/978026255337...

Things are very bad for U.S. vaccination policy these days and are only going to get worse. In @nejm.org, I examine the recent news about COVID-19 vaccines and ACIP, what likely lies ahead, and what the medical and public health communities should do to lessen the damage www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Apparently a reconstituted ACIP will be ready to meet on June 25. In normal times, identifying new members is a months-long process, with add’l steps to comply with the ‘balanced membership’ requirements of FACA. More details in this 2024 ACIP filing - gsa-geo.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/#t0000...

I’m very eager to hear from the now-former ACIP members—who (without exception?) dutifully followed CDC guidelines by not speaking publicly about ACIP’s work while serving on the committee—regarding what things were like for them, for ACIP, and for CDC since January.

If people are interested in learning about the ACIP and its decades of contributions to US vaccine policy successes, here’s a short 2014 piece I wrote in NEJM with Adel Mahmoud (timed with its 50th anniversary) www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

A good time to revisit this deep dive by @meredithwadman.bsky.social in March regarding the ACIP conflict-of-interest claims of Kennedy et al www.science.org/content/arti...

Update!

Still no Federal Register announcement regarding the scheduled June 25-27 ACIP meeting (and no draft agenda posted). More interestingly, specific details re: public comment submission dates (left) were removed from the ACIP website sometime this week (right).

Wow, FDA commissioner calling ACIP a “kangaroo court” and “rubber stamp” here.

Given this week’s events re: COVID vaccines, there’s lots of new interest in ‘shared clinical decision-making’ recommendations—what they are, what they mean, etc. Wrote about them in @jlme-journal.bsky.social several years back. (Message me if you can’t access it) www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Please spread the word! The National Clinician Scholars Program is accepting applications for the 2026-2028 cohort! Interested in a career using research to understand and improve the healthcare system and policy so that it works better for patients and communities? Apply! #HealthPolicy #MedSky

“We are seeing a very familiar playbook, but we are now seeing it from the highest levels of our government’s health agencies rather than the margins of the anti-vaccine conversation.” www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Fan mail!

Things can always be expanded or strengthened, but any good-faith discussion of our current vaccine safety systems should start from here…

Now on FirstView: "FDA Advisory Committee Review of Supplemental Indications and Reasons for Non-Approval, 2008-2022" by @audreydzhang.bsky.social, Nikhil Chaudhry, @reshmagar.bsky.social, Joseph S. Ross and @jasonlschwartz.bsky.social. #FDA www.cambridge.org/core/journal...