Opinion: Blocking physician input on vaccines endangers patients

Modern Healthcare – Friday, August 15, 2025

The following physician organizations are signatories to this column:

The American Academy of Pediatrics; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists; the American College of Physicians; the American Medical Association; and the Infectious Diseases Society of America

The recent decision by federal health officials to exclude voluntary liaisons, including the nation’s leading physician organizations, from the process of reviewing and informing vaccine recommendations threatens patient and public health. Removing critical front-line clinical experience and insight further erodes trust in evidence-based vaccine policy at a perilous moment of backsliding on vaccine-preventable diseases. It is precisely the wrong move at exactly the wrong time and should be reversed immediately.

For decades, highly trusted physician organizations have carefully analyzed and evaluated published and unpublished data to inform vaccine recommendations through Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) workgroups. ACIP voting members receive and consider recommendations from the workgroups to determine how to use vaccines to control disease in the U.S.

Physician involvement in these workgroups is essential to assessing not only the safety and efficacy of vaccines, but also evaluating the feasibility of implementation in clinical settings while also communicating effectively with our patients to build vaccine confidence. Doing so is critical to our collective mission as physicians to put evidence-based medicine into everyday practice. There is no substitute for the real-world clinical experience of physicians in the way vaccine recommendations are implemented; excluding our organizations from ACIP workgroups undermines trust and puts lives at risk.

This action compounds the damage done earlier this summer, when all 17 ACIP members were dismissed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and replaced by seven new members, including outspoken vaccine critics, in an opaque process that lacked proper vetting. Nearly 100 state and national medical associations protested the dismissal of standing ACIP members as a clear break with the nation’s long-standing commitment to a transparent and independent review of the evidence by unbiased clinical experts to inform vaccine recommendations.

ACIP has played a vital role in protecting public health for more than 60 years by holding high-profile public reviews of vaccine safety and efficacy data, recommending childhood and adult immunization schedules, and collaborating with international health partners on strain selection for immunizations that are updated annually. Vaccine coverage by health plans is based largely on ACIP vaccine recommendations, which also shape state immunization requirements. ACIP recommendations become official policy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention once adopted by the agency’s director.

Vaccines remain one of our safest and most powerful tools in protecting public health. Physicians play a vital role in building vaccine confidence among our patients by answering questions about vaccine science, safety and efficacy, and by helping to dispel the all-too-frequent misconceptions and misinformation that patients encounter. Excluding physician organizations from ACIP workgroups undermines the trust found at the heart of the patient-physician relationship, wrongly suggests that the experience and training of physicians need not play a role in developing effective vaccine recommendations, and opens the door to greater misinformation about vaccines and faster spread of vaccine-preventable illnesses.

Taken together, the latest federal actions on vaccine policy are a dangerous step back in protecting patients and public health. We strongly urge the administration to reconsider the measures already taken, including excluding our organizations from ACIP vaccine workgroups.

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