A recent federal effort to scale back the routine childhood vaccine schedule has shaped how families approach immunization, according to physicians and researchers at Penn Medicine and the Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
The proposal \u2014 introduced in January by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. \u2014 sought to reduce<\/a> the standard pediatric immunization schedule from 17 recommended vaccines to 11. Although a federal judge blocked<\/a> the change last month, clinicians at Penn and CHOP told The Daily Pennsylvanian that the debate contributed to a national wave<\/a> of vaccine distrust.<\/p>\n In the last six years, CHOP\u2019s Primary Care Network has seen a decrease in the percentage of children up to date on immunizations at age 2, according to Joseph St. Geme, the hospital\u2019s physician-in-chief.<\/p>\n St. Geme wrote that \u201cthe percentage was 80.0% in 2020 and has dropped to 73.0% in 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMost interactions continue to be very positive, very constructive \u2014 recognizing the shared goal by the pediatrician and parent for that child to be healthy and have a bright future,\u201d he added in an interview with the DP. \u201cBut there\u2019s a growing number of parents who do have concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n Get the DP delivered straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n Sign Up<\/a><\/p>\n CHOP Vaccine Education Center Director Paul Offit \u2014 who teaches pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine \u2014 said that patients often become \u201cless compelled by the fear of disease\u201d because vaccines have made those diseases less visible.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I talk to people, I say early on, \u2018is there anything that I can say that will change your mind?\u2019\u201d Offit explained. \u201cIf there\u2019s not, then we don\u2019t really need to have this conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n Some families \u201care just absolutely not going to move\u201d on their vaccine reluctance, CHOP infectious disease physician Lori Handy told the DP, adding that skepticism often emerges as a result of politics, religion, social circumstances, or distrust in the pharmaceutical industry.<\/p>\n Handy stated that vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to \u201csignificant growth of the medical freedom movement,\u201d including those who were hesitant to accept the vaccine.<\/p>\n CHOP primary care physician Katie Lockwood similarly described a shift within the public’s vaccine attitudes in a statement to the DP.<\/p>\n \u201cSome parents who previously vaccinated their children have halted giving additional vaccines or after having a new baby, decided not to vaccinate at all,\u201d Lockwood wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n Perelman School of Medicine professor and Leonard Davis Institute fellow Angela Shen conducts research on how the COVID-19 vaccine affected routine immunizations.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of decisions parents made for their kids were different than the decisions that they made for themselves,\u201d Shen said of the pandemic. She also highlighted that ongoing legislative debate regarding vaccinations is \u201cinjecting doubt in parents.\u201d<\/p>\n Offit said that it is \u201cperfectly reasonable\u201d for parents to ask questions about vaccines.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do ask a lot from parents,\u201d he said. \u201cWe ask them, in the first few years of life, to prevent 14 different diseases, which can mean as many as 25 inoculations during that time.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2025, the U.S. hit its highest rate<\/a> of measles cases in over 30 years, jumping from 59 reported cases in 2023 to 2,287 in 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you see lots of measles outbreaks, it tells you that there\u2019s something up with the system,\u201d Shen told the DP. \u201cYou see measles first because it\u2019s the most infectious. It spreads much easier, and so we call that the canary in the coal mine.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking forward, CHOP infectious disease physician Maulin Soneji predicts that clinics will need to increasingly test children with certain symptoms for diseases that have vaccines.<\/p>\n He explained that vaccine uptake improvements in recent years have reduced the need for invasive procedures like lumbar punctures, which involve taking fluid from the spine to test for illnesses like meningitis for children with fevers.<\/p>\n When the 2026 updated vaccine schedule was first proposed, Soneji recalled thinking that children and families would \u201csuffer needlessly\u201d from such testing.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re going to be doing more of these procedures and more of these workups, especially on unvaccinated children,\u201d Soneji said.<\/p>\n Staff reporter Addison Saji covers Penn Medicine and can be reached at saji@thedp.com<\/a> At Penn, she studies English. Follow her on X at @addisonsaji<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recent federal effort to scale back the routine childhood vaccine schedule has shaped how families approach immunization,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-166138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-philadelphia","9":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","10":"tag-philadelphia-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}