{"id":404496,"date":"2026-01-13T11:31:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T11:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/404496\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T11:31:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T11:31:25","slug":"meant-to-confuse-public-health-advocates-slam-rfk-jr-s-vaccine-schedule-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/404496\/","title":{"rendered":"“Meant to confuse”: Public health advocates slam RFK Jr.\u2019s vaccine schedule changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

A shift in vaccine recommendations has sparked outcry from medical and pediatric institutions across the country. On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention moved to reduce the number of vaccines recommended in the childhood immunization schedule. The decision was spurred by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/a>, a noted critic of vaccines who has spread misinformation linking childhood vaccination to autism.<\/p>\n

The federal schedule for childhood immunizations were updated to remove five broadly recommended vaccinations and reduce the HPV vaccination recommendation to a single dose.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese recommendations are meant to confuse parents, limit access to vaccines, and push RFK Jr\u2019s political agenda at the expense of children\u2019s lives,\u201d the National Public Health Coalition<\/a> said in a press release Monday.<\/p>\n

The influenza vaccine is among those removed from the schedule. This change comes during a 25-year-high<\/a> in flu cases as a new strain of the virus \u2014 subclade K of the H3N2 virus \u2014 spread across the country. The CDC has reported nine pediatric deaths in the current flu season.<\/p>\n

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, also said the update creates unnecessary risk.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis schedule is the result of a secretive process done by unknown people, without the benefit of public input,\u201d Benjamin said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cThis is health policy malpractice at the highest level and must be reversed before children and families across the country suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Much of the justification for altering the vaccine schedule was to bring it closer in line with other developed countries like Denmark, Germany and Japan, which all have fewer immunization recommendations than the previous U.S. schedules.<\/p>\n

Benjamin and other critics argue that this is not a coherent basis for the change because these countries have significantly smaller populations, different health care systems and regionally-specific public health concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t follow Denmark\u2019s vaccine recommendations because we don\u2019t live in Denmark,\u201d said Dr. Jose Romero of the American Academy of Pediatrics<\/a> Committee on Infectious Diseases.<\/p>\n

Denmark has a population of around 2 percent of the United States and provides citizens free health care. They are \u201ctwo very different countries,\u201d Dr. Anders Hviid, leader of vaccine safety and effectiveness research at the Statens Serum Institut in Denmark, told CNN<\/a>. \u201cPublic health is not one-size-fits-all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

about public health<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A shift in vaccine recommendations has sparked outcry from medical and pediatric institutions across the country. On Monday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":{"0":"post-404496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}