Parents And Doctors Are Left in the Dark Amid Trump Admin’s Murky Childhood Vaccine Guidelines

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,...

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