Trump executive order narrows, stretches out childhood vaccine schedule

The president said the order was driven in large part by his concern over any potential links between the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule and the dramatic rise in autism diagnoses in American children since the late 1980s. The order aligns with a May executive order that recognized a Department of Health and Human Services scientific assessment on childhood vaccines as a guiding resource for the federal government. That assessment noted that the U.S. recommends more childhood vaccines than its peer developed countries “including more than twice as many vaccine doses as some European nations,” according to a statement from the White House. It also “identified a set of consensus vaccines that are consistently recommended in all peer countries.”

If the order – which has yet to be broadly publicly released – is aligned with guidance the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released earlier this year, then the core recommendations will include measles, mumps and rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, haemophilus influenza type B, pneumococcal disease, human papillomavirus, and varicella, or chickenpox. Vaccines for influenza, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, respiratory syncytial virus and COVID-19 will no longer be recommended for all children.

While federal agencies make recommendations for the childhood vaccine schedule, the “mandates” that Trump and Health and Human Services officials often reference typically come from state law, which can require children to have certain vaccinations in order to attend school or access day care centers. 

The order also “directs the attorney general to advance legal challenges against states that violate children’s rights to religious or medical vaccination exemptions,” according to Trump.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said the order was restoring “informed consent and parental choice to their rightful place in American medicine.”

Both the president and Kennedy said that parents would still have access to all of the vaccines for their children if they preferred to operate by the prior recommendations.