After U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that healthy children would no longer be advised to receive the COVID vaccine, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released its own vaccine guidance that recommended the shots to all children under 2. It was the first time in 30 years that AAP had issued vaccine recommendations that substantially differed from U.S. government guidelines.
As the 2025 president of the AAP, Dr. Susan Kressly has challenged the Trump Administration on health-related policies that she and her organization—which represents 67,000 pediatricians—deemed harmful to children and their families. “We felt that we had no choice but to act, because if we didn’t stand up to protect the health of children, who would?” she says.
Under Kressly’s leadership, AAP sued HHS and Kennedy twice in 2025: first over the changes to COVID vaccine policy and Kennedy’s decision to replace members of a key federal vaccine advisory panel, and next to challenge HHS over its decision to cut millions of dollars in federal grants to AAP. Both lawsuits are ongoing.