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Tag: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

  • CDC website changed to include false claims that link autism and vaccines

    (CNN) — Scientific information on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website was replaced Wednesday with anti-vaccine talking points that don’t rule out a link between vaccines and autism, despite an abundance of evidence that there’s no connection.

    Bullet points on the top of the page now state that “vaccines do not cause autism is not an evidence-based claim” because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.

    The language is a common tactic used to cast doubt on the safety of vaccines, said Alison Singer, president and co-founder of the Autism Science Foundation.

    “You can’t do a scientific study to show that something does not cause something else,” she said Thursday.

    “All we can do in the scientific community is point to the preponderance of the evidence, the number of studies, the fact that the studies are so conclusive,” Singer said. “These studies all agree. They’re very clear, and it’s time to move on.”

    The preponderance of scientific evidence shows that vaccines do not cause autism, Singer said.

    “No environmental factor has been better studied as a potential cause of autism than vaccines. This includes vaccine ingredients as well as the body’s response to vaccines,” the Autism Science Foundation said in a statement Thursday.

    Dr. Paul Offit agrees. In a post on Substack on Thursday, Offit, a pediatrician and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said scientific studies can “never prove never.”

    “If RFK Jr. wanted to be honest with the American public, he would make it clear on the CDC’s website that chicken nuggets also might cause autism, which has never been and will never be disproven,” Offit wrote.

    HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said Thursday, “We are updating the CDC’s website to reflect gold standard, evidence-based science.”

    However, Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, recently told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta on an episode of his “Chasing Life” podcast that he doesn’t think vaccines cause autism.

    “I think there’s no medicine that’s 1,000% safe,” Makary said. “And I think we have to remember that with everything. I think the absolutism around some of this stuff creates mistrust. And when we say they’re 1,000% safe and it’s impossible for there to be a single complication of a vaccine, that’s the kind of rhetoric, I think, that doesn’t resonate well. So I think we have be humble and take a very honest approach.”

    Studies find no relationship

    Other bullets on the updated CDC page say studies supporting a link between vaccines and autism have been ignored by health authorities. This too is not true: Studies showing a connection between vaccines and autism have proved to be poorly done or were fraudulent. There are, however, many well-done, credible studies that find no such relationship.

    One of the largest studies looking at this question was published in 2019. Researchers in Denmark enrolled more than 650,000 children born between 1999 and 2011 and followed them from the time they were 1 year of age until the end of August 2013. Roughly 6,500 children were diagnosed with autism during the study period.

    When the researchers compared those who received the MMR vaccine with those who did not, they found no significant difference in the risk of developing autism. That held true whether the kids got other vaccines, such as the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine; whether they had siblings with autism; or a host of other factors, such as whether certain kids might be prone to developing a form of regressive autism after getting their shots.

    “This study strongly supports that MMR vaccine does not increase the risk for autism,” the authors wrote in the conclusion.

    This study is not cited on the CDC’s updated “state of the evidence” on MMR vaccines, however. Instead, it mentions older evidence reviews and raises questions about aluminum, an ingredient added to some vaccines to boost their protection.

    The new CDC updates do mention another recent Danish study, published in 2025, which found no link between aluminum in childhood vaccines and any of 50 disorders, including neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. But instead of accepting the overall conclusion of the study, the new CDC page tries to cast doubt on it by homing in on details of data in a supplementary table, saying the findings and other “warrant further investigation” into aluminum exposure and chronic diseases.

    The CDC page also says the US Department of Health and Human Services has launched a comprehensive assessment of the causes of autism, including investigations on plausible biologic mechanisms and potential causal links.

    Singer said this is a waste of valuable research money and a distraction from strong science showing that most cases of autism can be traced to genes that affect a baby’s brain development.

    The main heading on the page states that “Vaccines do not cause Autism,” but it has an asterisk that directs readers to a footnote: “The header ‘Vaccines do not cause autism’ has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.”

    The footnote seems to refer to a commitment by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician and Republican from Louisiana, during his confirmation process that language on the CDC website “pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism” would not be removed. Cassidy described the promise in a speech in which he explained his support for Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist.

    Cassidy told CNN on Thursday that he had spoken with Kennedy.

    In a statement posted on X on Thursday, Cassidy said, “I’m a doctor who has seen people die from vaccine-preventable diseases. What parents need to hear right now is vaccines for measles, polio, hepatitis B and other childhood diseases are safe and effective and will not cause autism. Any statement to the contrary is wrong, irresponsible, and actively makes Americans sicker.”

    ‘Dangerous health disinformation’

    Dr. Peter Hotez, who is director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital and wrote a book called “Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism” about his daughter’s diagnosis, said the updated information on the CDC’s page follows a well-worn playbook.

    “They’ve decided they want to prove vaccines cause autism. So they keep making a series of assertions,” Hotez said, going back to debunked research that claimed the MMR vaccines caused autism and a retracted 2005 Rolling Stone article by Kennedy that asserted the preservative thimerosal caused autism.

    There have also been claims that aluminum in vaccines was a cause of autism, and those have been disproved, Hotez said.

    Hotez says the updates to the CDC’s page are “pure garbage.”

    “I consider it a piece of dangerous health disinformation, and it needs to be removed right away,” he said.

    Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who recently resigned as director of the CDC’s National Center on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said on social media late Wednesday that the changes are “a national embarrassment.”

    “The weaponization of the voice of CDC is getting worse. This is a public health emergency,” he wrote.

    Daskalakis said the agency’s scientists were completely blindsided by the page update.

    “This distortion of science under the CDC moniker is the reason I resigned with my colleagues,” he told CNN.

    Rather than restoring trust in America’s health agencies, moves like this have undermined it, said Dr. Sean O’ Leary, a pediatrician who chairs the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

    “I fear that it’s going to lead to fewer children being vaccinated, children suffering from diseases they didn’t need to suffer from,” O’Leary said.

    This is the latest move by the Trump administration to alter longstanding US vaccine policy and practice and cast doubt on vaccinations.

    Kennedy has hired longtime anti-vax allies – including David Geier, a discredited researcher who was once disciplined by the Maryland State Board of Physicians for practicing medicine without a license, and Lyn Redwood, a nurse who was president of the World Mercury Project, which later became Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group Kennedy ran before campaigning for office – to undertake new evaluations of government data in an effort to prove conspiracy theories that hazards of vaccines have long been hidden from the public.

    The rate of routine childhood vaccinations has dropped in the United States, allowing preventable diseases including measles and whooping cough to surge. In a call with state health officials Monday, the CDC disease detectives leading the measles response suggested that the US status as a country that has eliminated continuous measles spread was in jeopardy.

    Brenda Goodman and CNN

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  • More than half of CDC staffers recently fired by Trump administration have been reinstated

    (CNN) — Hundreds of staff fired from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Friday have been reinstated, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.

    After a new round of layoff notices sent late Friday night to around 1,300 workers at the CDC, approximately 700 were reinstated on Saturday, while about 600 remain laid off, according to the union, which represents federal workers.

    “The employees who received incorrect notifications were never separated from the agency and have all been notified that they are not subject to the reduction in force,” said Andrew Nixon, director of communications for the US Department of Health and Human Services.

    Among reinstated employees are staff that publish the agency’s flagship journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, according to Dr. Debra Houry, who recently resigned as the agency’s chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science. Houry and other high-level CDC officials resigned in August in protest over the firing of recently confirmed CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez.

    Athalia Christie, the incident commander for the measles response, was among hundreds of employees mistakenly fired on Friday. The annual total of measles cases in the US – now up to 1,563 cases since January – is the highest by a significant margin since measles was declared eliminated in America a quarter-century ago.

    Staff were also reinstated at the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, the Global Health Center, and the Public Health Infrastructure Center, which manages more than $3 billion in grants to 107 state and local governments to help build local public health workforces, said Dr. Brian Castrucci, who is president and chief executive officer of the de Beaumont Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for public health workers.

    Staff and officers at the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service who were able to check their emails have also received notices that their firings were in error, according to a CDC official with knowledge of the situation who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

    Epidemic Intelligence Service officers, also known as “disease detectives,” are often the first to respond to disease threats when they arise.

    “We think all staff and all officers” are back, the official said.

    The mistakenly fired employees were sent incorrect notifications because of a coding error on the notices, according to an HHS official. The employees who got the miscoded notifications were all told about the glitch on Friday or Saturday, the person said.

    “It’s pure managerial incompetence,” said Dr. Nirav Shah, who resigned earlier this year as principal deputy director of the CDC. “I used to think that chaos was the byproduct of this managerial incompetence. Now I start to wonder whether the chaos is the point.”

    Staff at CDC’s Washington office, in its Violence Prevention programs, and in the Office of the Director of the Injury Center, remain separated from the agency as part of the latest round of the Trump administration’s Reduction in Force initiatives. In total, the cuts total about 600 positions.

    The impact of these job losses may not be immediately apparent to people going about their day-to-day lives, but they leave the country less prepared, said Shah, who is currently a visiting professor at Colby College in Maine.

    “These cuts will mean that when the next health crisis comes along, precious days, weeks, months will be spent getting ready when we should have been ready,” Shah said.

    President Donald Trump said late Friday afternoon that he planned to fire “a lot” of federal workers in retaliation for the government shutdown, vowing to target those deemed to be aligned with the Democratic Party.

    “We figure they started this thing, so they should be Democrat-oriented,” Trump said, placing blame for the shutdown on Democratic lawmakers. Trump did not provide details on what qualified the affected workers as “Democrat-oriented.”

    The legality of firing federal workers during a government shutdown is also in question. Shortly after Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought posted “The RIFs have begun” on X on Friday AFGE replied “The lawsuit has been filed.”

    A court filing in that case indicates more than 4,100 federal workers were impacted by the cuts at HHS as well as the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security and Treasury.

    “My message for the CDC staff is the work they do has never been more important,” Shah said.

    CNN’s Deidre McPhillips contributed reporting.

    Brenda Goodman, Meg Tirrell and CNN

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  • With CDC signoff, CVS says Covid-19 vaccines will be available nationwide without a prescription

    (CNN) — The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signed off on a recommendation that patients must consult a health care provider to get a Covid-19 vaccine, although they don’t necessarily need a prescription.

    The updated CDC recommendation — made by a new panel of vaccine advisers chosen by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — shifted away from a broader push in past years for most people to get an updated Covid-19 vaccine. It became final with signoff from Acting CDC Director Jim O’Neill.

    The new recommendations mean people ages 6 months and older can get Covid-19 vaccines after consulting with a qualified health care provider, which keeps the shots available but may also create more barriers to access than in past years.

    Before the finalized recommendation this year, access to Covid-19 shots has differed from state to state as pharmacies and providers navigated new federal vaccine policies. CVS, which had previously limited access to Covid-19 shots in some places, said Monday that it was “updating our systems to be able to offer the updated COVID-19 vaccines to patients nationwide” and that “prescriptions from outside prescribers will no longer be required in any states.”

    The signoff is also coming later than usual for the fall respiratory virus season. With the recommendation, the government can finally distribute Covid-19 vaccines through its Vaccines for Children program, which provides free inoculations to about half of US children.

    The CDC’s independent vaccine advisers, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, voted unanimously last month that people who want a Covid-19 vaccine should consult with a health care provider, a process called shared clinical decision-making. However, they narrowly voted down a recommendation that a prescription should be required to get the shot.

    In August, the US Food and Drug Administration moved to limit approval of Covid-19 vaccines to adults 65 and older as well as younger people who are at higher risk of severe illness because of other health conditions.

    A study published last month in the journal JAMA Network Open found that a universal Covid-19 vaccine recommendation — as had been in place for the US in recent years — could save thousands more lives than limiting the recommendation to high-risk groups.

    Experts said that even requiring shared clinical decision-making could make Covid-19 shots harder to get.

    The recommendation “assumes health care and insurance,” said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who recently resigned as head of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “We do not have universal health care in this country, and we know millions of people are losing insurance.”

    HHS said it was bringing back “informed consent” ahead of vaccination.

    “CDC’s 2022 blanket recommendation for perpetual COVID-19 boosters deterred health care providers from talking about the risks and benefits of vaccination for the individual patient or parent. That changes today,” O’Neill, who is also the deputy secretary of HHS, said in a statement.

    Another new recommendation will mean toddlers get their first vaccines against measles and chickenpox separately, around their first birthdays. In this case, the ACIP guidance formalizes an existing recommendation, which is designed to reduce a very rare, slightly elevated risk of seizures when the two shots are combined into a single injection.

    The CDC advisers said that the single-dose measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccine was not recommended before age 4 and that younger kids should get the varicella vaccine, which protects against chickenpox, separately from the shot that protects against measles, mumps and rubella.

    Brenda Goodman, Katherine Dillinger and CNN

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  • Ex-CDC director set to tell senators that RFK Jr. required political sign-off on decisions, called for firings without cause

    (CNN) — Dr. Susan Monarez, former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is expected to say in a Senate committee hearing this week that US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put politics before public health when he required that all CDC policy and personnel decisions be cleared by political staff, according to her prepared testimony.

    Monarez is set to appear before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in a hearing Wednesday.

    She was ousted last month, just 29 days into her tenure as CDC director, amid clashes with Kennedy over vaccine policies. She will be joined at the hearing by Dr. Debra Houry, who stepped down from her role as the CDC’s chief medical officer in protest after Monarez’s ouster.

    “I was fired for holding the line on scientific integrity,” Monarez says in her prepared testimony. “I had refused to commit to approving vaccine recommendations without evidence, fire career officials without cause, or resign.”

    HHS has not responded to CNN’s request for comment on Monarez’s claims.

    In her prepared testimony, Monarez offers new details about her brief tenure as CDC director, including saying Kennedy issued a directive that CDC policy and personnel decisions required prior approval from political staff — a break from the practice of past administrations.

    Bloomberg first reported on the prepared testimony Monday.

    Monarez also says that on August 2, she learned from media reports that Kennedy had removed liaison members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP — an influential group of outside experts who advise the agency on vaccinations – essentially being blindsided by the news.

    Then, “on the morning of August 25, Secretary Kennedy demanded two things of me that were inconsistent with my oath of office and the ethics required of a public official,” Monarez says. “He directed me to commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation regardless of the scientific evidence. He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy, without cause. He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign.”

    Monarez says she told Kennedy that she could not “pre-approve recommendations without reviewing the evidence” and that she had no basis to fire scientific experts.

    “On August 25, I could have stayed silent, agreed to demands, and no one would have known,” Monarez’s testimony says. “What the public would have seen were scientists dismissed without cause and vaccine protections quietly eroded — all under the authority of a Senate-confirmed Director with ‘unimpeachable credentials.’ I could have kept the office and the title. But I would have lost the one thing that cannot be replaced: my integrity.”

    Kennedy removed all 17 sitting members of ACIP in June. The committee now includes an entirely new group of experts, who are scheduled to meet Thursday and Friday to discuss Covid-19 vaccines as well as immunizations against hepatitis B and measles, mumps, rubella and varicella. Several of the new members have made unproven claims about vaccines, including one who said, without evidence, that Covid shots are causing “unprecedented levels of death and harm in young people.”

    Monarez says the new composition of the committee has “raised concerns from the medical community.”

    “There is real risk that recommendations could be made restricting access to vaccines for children and others in need without rigorous scientific review,” she says. “With no permanent CDC Director in place, those recommendations could be adopted. The stakes are not theoretical. We have already seen the largest measles outbreak in more than 30 years, which claimed the lives of two children. If vaccine protections are weakened, preventable diseases will return.”

    Jacqueline Howard and CNN

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  • RFK Jr. promised to ‘Make Our Children Healthy Again.’ Here’s how he plans to do it

    (CNN) — President Donald Trump’s strategy to ‘Make America Healthy Again’ includes investigating vaccine injuries and pharmaceutical practices but stops short of new regulatory action, for now.

    US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unveiled the MAHA strategy on Tuesday, joined by Agriculture Department Secretary Brooke Rollins, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, and other top Trump officials.

    The report hews closely to a draft document circulated in August that cites earlier Trump administration announcements — developing a definition for ultraprocessed foods, educating the public about synthetic kratom — but largely bypassed industry crackdowns.

    Language around pesticides strategy also remained unchanged. Environmental and food activists had rallied for the administration to include steps to reduce pesticide usage and probe potential health risks of commonly used chemicals such as RoundUp.

    The report says that USDA, EPA and the National Institutes of Health will develop a framework to study cumulative exposures to chemicals including pesticides and microplastics. USDA and EPA will also invest in new farming approaches to reduce chemical use, and EPA will launch a public awareness campaign about the limited risk of approved products.

    The commission’s first report this May suggested a broad range of factors driving chronic disease in the US, including ultraprocessed foods, environmental exposures, and overprescription of pharmaceuticals like antidepressants.

    The report noted previous announcements that HHS, the NIH and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are studying the causes of autism. Kennedy had previously promised some answers on the root causes in September; NIH is expected to announce autism research grants this month.

    Recent reports suggest that HHS will issue a report that links the development of autism to taking Tylenol during pregnancy.

    Medicines and vaccines

    Kennedy has drawn criticism for suggesting antidepressants, particularly those that are part of a family known as SSRIs are as addictive as heroin and can be dangerous. Following the August 27 shooting in Minneapolis, he told Fox News that HHS is launching studies “on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence.”

    SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, are the most prescribed class of antidepressants for depression, anxiety disorders and many other mental health conditions. Several SSRIs have been on the market in the United States since the 1990s, including Prozac, Zoloft and Celexa. Experts agree that there is no scientific evidence or correlation between these drugs and violence towards others.

    Tuesday’s report states that HHS will assemble a working group of federal officials to evaluate SSRI prescribing patterns, specifically among children. HHS will also “evaluate the therapeutic harms and benefits of current diagnostic thresholds,” or the current common practices doctors use to diagnose patients with mental health disorders.

    Dr. Theresa Miskimen Rivera, president of the American Psychiatric Association said access to care, not over-medication is the bigger problem when it comes to helping kids’ mental health in the country, and there is no mention of the issue in the report. The report said addressing a child’s nutrition, screen time, and exercise can improve their mental health, but can’t address everything. “Psychiatric conditions are complex in nature,” she said. Extreme poverty, post traumatic stress disorder, trauma-related factors should also be addressed, but there is no mention in the report of any of those issues either.

    “In terms of over medication, that’s not what we do. We have a comprehensive evaluation and we are evidence based. We diagnose than create a comprehensive treatment plan, “ Miskimen Rivera told CNN. “Medication can save lives, not only in children, but in adults and elderly.”

    When asked about whether or not the commission chose to consider gun violence – the leading cause of death for children – as one of the issues to be investigated, Kennedy doubled down on the issue of prescription drugs, saying “We are doing studies now, or initiating studies to look at the correlation and the connection, potential connection between over medicating our kids and this violence.”

    HHS will also work with the White House Domestic Policy Council on a new vaccine framework that, the report said, will ensure “America has the best childhood vaccine schedule” and ensure “scientific and medical freedom.”

    The report comes as Kennedy continues to defend his shakeup of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over vaccine policy, including the ouster of CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez.

    The administration will also increase oversight of “deceptive” direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceutical products, including from social media influencers and telehealth companies, it said.

    Food policy stays the course

    FDA will continue work on developing a definition for ultraprocessed foods, but the report bypasses recommendations, like those of former FDA Director Dr. David Kessler, to essentially order certain additives off the market until they are reviewed.

    Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of Tufts Food is Medicine Institute said a definition of ultraprocessed foods would be “really important.” With more than half of calories in the food supply coming from ultraprocessed foods, addressing this and other issues involving the nation’s diet would mean a “massive fight with the industry and is going to be incredibly controversial, but is much needed.”

    “Overall, this is really quite thorough, quite specific, and even if parts of this are accomplished, this could have tremendous positive impact for Americans,” Mozaffarian told CNN.

    Other experts, like Marion Nestle, agreed the report was ambitious in scope, but noted it fell short on regulatory action. “What’s still missing is regulation. So much of this is voluntary, work with, promote, partner,” said Nestle, who is the Paulette Goddard professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University.

    The report also nods to new, user-friendly dietary guidelines expected later this year. Kennedy has promised a vastly shortened set of recommendations that will emphasize whole foods.

    The commission also cited ongoing work to reduce ultraprocessed foods in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Head Start.

    While the report also touches on agriculture deregulation with the aim of making it easier for small farms to get greater access to markets and schools, Ken Cook, co-founder of the Environmental Working Group, a health advocacy organization said the report abandons earlier MAHA promises to ban toxic pesticides and instead “echoes the pesticide industry’s talking points.”

    “Secretary Kennedy and President Trump cynically convinced millions they’d protect children from harmful farm chemicals – promises now exposed as hollow,” Cook said in a statement.

    There were minor changes from the draft document leaked in August. For instance, the August 6 draft stated that the FDA and other agencies will crack down on “Illegal Chinese Vapes,” while the final version promises enforcement on vapes more broadly.

    “We support the goal of making children healthier and addressing and preventing chronic disease, but unfortunately, the recommendations fall short in some really critical ways,” Laura Kate Bender, vice president nationwide advocacy and public policy for the American Lung Association told CNN.

    “They continue to cast doubt on vaccines, one of the most, important, proven public health interventions that we can have for kids health. They don’t address some major contributors to diseases in kids like pollution, tobacco use, beyond the mention of vaping, and this report is coming out at the same time that we’re continuing to see dramatic cuts in staff and funding of a lot of the programs that could make the good parts of the report a reality.”

    The report’s emphasis on kids’ health can help overall, Dr. Michelle Macy, director of the Mary Ann & J. Milburn Smith Child Health Outcomes, Research and Evaluation Center in Chicago told CNN. “I’m really trying to look for bright spots in this report, and I think that the focus on data and infrastructure for us to be able to answer big questions about what environmental and food exposures and medication exposures do to shape the trajectory of someone’s health and chronic disease across the lifespan is something that has promise and potential.”

    Dr. Richard Besser, pediatrician and president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said that having a focus on preventing chronic disease in children is a good thing, but he said, with Kennedy’s track record that includes firing thousands of federal health employees, slashing millions in health research funding, dismantling entire offices that managed important issues like smoking and chronic disease specifically, in addition to his “assault on vaccinations” will undermine any potential good of this kind of report.

    “Neither RFK Jr.’s record, nor his policies outlined in the report give me confidence that he is going to make any difference whatsoever on chronic diseases in children,” Besser told CNN.

    Sarah Owermohle, Jen Christensen and CNN

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  • Florida plans to end vaccine mandates statewide, including for schoolchildren

    (CNN) — Florida will move to end all vaccine mandates in the state, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo announced Wednesday.

    The move would make Florida the first state to end a longstanding – and constitutionally upheld – practice of requiring certain vaccines for school students.

    The state health department will immediately move to end all non-statutory mandates in the state, Ladapo said at a news conference. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was also at the event, said state lawmakers would then look into developing a legislative package to end any remaining mandates.

    Ladapo said that every vaccine mandate “is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”

    All 50 states have had school immunization requirements since the beginning of the 1980s, with incoming kindergartners needing shots to protect against diseases including measles, polio and tetanus. No states require a Covid-19 vaccine for schoolchildren.

    All states allow medical exemptions from these school vaccine mandates, and most also allow for exemptions due to personal or religious beliefs. Exemption rates have been on the rise for years in the US, with a record share of incoming kindergartners skipping the required shots in the 2024-25 school year.

    Florida’s school vaccine exemption rate last school year– about 5% – was higher than the national average, data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows, and nearly all were for nonmedical reasons.

    “We are concerned that today’s announcement will put children in Florida public schools at higher risk for getting sick, which will have a ripple effect across our communities,” Dr. Rana Alissa, president of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in a statement.

    “For many kids, the best part of school is being with friends – sharing space, playing on the playground, and learning together. Close contact makes it easy for contagious diseases to spread quickly,” she said. “When everyone in a school is vaccinated, it is harder for diseases to spread and easier for everyone to continue learning and having fun. When children are sick and miss school caregivers also miss work, which not only impacts those families but also the local economy.”

    A study published last year by the CDC estimated that routine childhood vaccinations – such as those included in school mandates – will have prevented about 508 million illnesses, 32 million hospitalizations and 1,129,000 deaths among children born between 1994 and 2003. They also were estimated to avert $540 billion in direct costs.

    Ladapo said that vaccination should be an individual choice.

    “People have a right to make their own decisions, informed decisions,” he said. “What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your god. I don’t have that right. Government does not have that right.”

    But experts say that freedom comes with responsibilities.

    “We’re all routinely subject to rules that enable us to live together safely, and I personally want those rules in place to protect me and the people I care about. We abide by speed limits, traffic lights, infant car seat and seatbelt laws – all requirements that have expanded over the years as safety technology and engineering has improved,” said Dr. Kelly Moore, president and CEO of immunize.org, a nonprofit organization focused on vaccine access.

    “I share with many other people the belief that all children who are required to attend school should also have a right to the best possible defense from vaccine-preventable diseases while they are there,” she said.

    Some vaccine mandates in Florida can be rolled back unilaterally by the state health department, Ladapo said, but others will require coordination with lawmakers.

    Experts who oppose the move to end vaccine mandates emphasize that the change is not final and that timing is critical.

    With the announcement coming after the start of the school year, Floridians will have a chance to experience and reflect on what a year of low vaccination coverage looks like, Moore said.

    “This timing gives leaders several months to reconsider whether this is what’s best for Florida families. It’s quite likely that Floridians will have reasons to regret that decision as time goes by and outbreaks disrupt learning,” she said.

    The American Medical Association “strongly opposes” the plan to end vaccine mandates, Dr. Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, an internal medicine physician and member of the professional organization’s board of trustees, said in a statement.

    “This unprecedented rollback would undermine decades of public health progress and place children and communities at increased risk for diseases such as measles, mumps, polio, and chickenpox resulting in serious illness, disability, and even death,” she said. “While there is still time, we urge Florida to reconsider this change to help prevent a rise of infectious disease outbreaks that put health and lives at risk.”

    Deidre McPhillips, Shawn Nottingham and CNN

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  • Blue States That Sued Kept Most CDC Grants, While Red States Feel Brunt of Trump Clawbacks

    The Trump administration’s cuts to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding for state and local health departments had vastly uneven effects depending on the political leanings of a state, according to a KFF Health News analysis. Democratic-led states and select blue-leaning cities fought back in court and saw money for public health efforts restored — while GOP-led states sustained big losses.

    The Department of Health and Human Services in late March canceled nearly 700 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grants nationwide — together worth about $11 billion. Awarded during the covid-19 pandemic, they supported efforts to vaccinate people, reduce health disparities among demographic groups, upgrade antiquated systems for detecting infectious disease outbreaks, and hire community health workers.

    Initially, grant cancellations hit blue and red states roughly evenly. Four of the five jurisdictions with the largest number of terminated grants were led by Democrats: California, the District of Columbia, Illinois, and Massachusetts.

    But after attorneys general and governors from about two dozen blue states sued in federal court and won an injunction, the balance flipped. Of the five states with the most canceled grants, four are led by Republicans: Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Ohio.

    In blue states, nearly 80% of the CDC grant cuts have been restored, compared with fewer than 5% in red states, according to the KFF Health News analysis. Grant amounts reported in an HHS database known as the Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System, or TAGGS, often don’t match what states confirmed. Instead, this analysis focused on the number of grants.

    The divide is an example of the polarization that permeates health care issues, in which access to safety-net health programs, abortion rights, and the ability of public health officials to respond to disease threats diverge significantly depending on the political party in power.

    In an emailed statement, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said the agency “is committed to protecting the health of every American, regardless of politics or geography. These funds were provided in response to the COVID pandemic, which is long over. We will continue working with states to strengthen public health infrastructure and ensure communities have the tools they need to respond to outbreaks and keep people safe.”

    The money in question wasn’t spent solely on covid-related activities, public health experts say; it was also used to bolster public health infrastructure and help contain many types of viruses and diseases, including the flu, measles, and RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus.

    “It really supported infrastructure across the board, particularly in how states respond to public health threats,” said Susan Kansagra, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

    The Trump cutbacks came as the U.S. recorded its largest measles outbreak in over three decades and 266 pediatric deaths during the most recent flu season — the highest reported outside of a pandemic since 2004. Public health departments canceled vaccine clinics, laid off staff, and put contracts on hold, health officials said in interviews.

    After its funding cuts were blocked in court, California retained every grant the Trump administration attempted to claw back, while Texas remains the state with the most grants terminated, with at least 30. As the CDC slashed grants in Texas, its measles outbreak spread across the U.S. and Mexico, sickening at least 4,500 people and killing at least 16.

    Colorado, which joined the lawsuit, had 11 grant terminations at first, but then 10 were retained. Meanwhile, its neighboring states that didn’t sue — Wyoming, Utah, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma — collectively lost 55 grants, with none retained.

    In Jackson, Ohio, a half-dozen community health workers came to work one day in March to find the Trump administration had canceled their grant five months early, leaving the Jackson County Health Department half a million dollars short — and them without jobs.

    “I had to lay off three employees in a single day, and I haven’t had to do that before. We don’t have those people doing outreach in Jackson County anymore,” Health Commissioner Kevin Aston said.

    At one point, he said, the funding helped 11 Appalachian Ohio counties. Now it supports one.

    Marsha Radabaugh, one employee who was reassigned, has scaled back her community health efforts: She’d been helping serve hot meals to homeless people and realized that many clients couldn’t read or write, so she brought forms for services such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to their encampment in a local park and helped fill them out.

    “We would find them rehab places. We’d get out hygiene kits, blankets, tents, zero-degree sleeping bags, things like that,” she said. As a counselor, she’d also remind people “that they’re cared for, that they’re worthy of being a human — because, a lot of the time, they’re not treated that way.”

    Sasha Johnson, who led the community health worker program, said people like Radabaugh “were basically a walking human 411,” offering aid to those in need.

    Radabaugh also partnered with a food bank to deliver meals to homebound residents.

    Aston said the abrupt way they lost the funds — which meant the county unexpectedly had to pay unemployment for more people — could have ruined the health district financially. Canceling funding midcycle, he said, “was really scary.”

    HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist and promoter of vaccine misinformation, has called the CDC a “cesspool of corruption.” At HHS, he has taken steps to undermine vaccination in the U.S. and abroad.

    Federal CDC funding accounts for more than half of state and local health department budgets, according to KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. States that President Donald Trump won in the 2024 election received a higher share of the $15 billion the CDC allocated in fiscal 2023 than those that Democrat Kamala Harris won, according to KFF.

    The Trump administration’s nationwide CDC grant terminations reflect this. More than half were in states that Trump won in 2024, totaling at least 370 terminations before the court action, according to KFF Health News’ analysis.

    The Columbus, Ohio, health department had received $6.2 million in CDC grants, but roughly half of it — $3 million — disappeared with the Trump cuts. The city laid off 11 people who worked on investigating infectious disease outbreaks in such places as schools and nursing homes, Columbus Health Commissioner Mysheika Roberts said.

    She also said the city had planned to buy a new electronic health record system for easier access to patients’ hospital records — which could improve disease detection and provide better treatment for those infected — but that was put on ice.

    “We’ve never had a grant midcycle just get pulled from us for no reason,” Roberts said. “This sense of uncertainty is stressful.”

    Columbus did not receive its money directly from the CDC. Rather, the state gave the city some funds it received from the federal government. Ohio, led by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and a Republican attorney general, did not sue to block the funding cuts.

    Columbus sued the federal government in April to keep its money, along with other Democratic-led municipalities in Republican-governed states: Harris County, Texas, home to Houston; the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County in Tennessee; and Kansas City, Missouri. A federal judge in June blocked those cuts.

    As of mid-August, Columbus was awaiting the funds. Roberts said the city won’t rehire staff because the federal funding was expected to end in December.

    Joe Grogan, a senior scholar at the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Institute and former director of the White House Domestic Policy Council in Trump’s first term, said state and local agencies “are not entitled” to the federal money, which was awarded “to deal with an emergency” that has ended.

    “We were throwing money out the door the last five years,” Grogan said of the federal government. “I don’t understand why there would ever be a controversy in unspent covid money coming back.”

    Ken Gordon, Ohio Department of Health spokesperson, wrote in an email that the $250 million in grants lost had helped with, among other things, upgrading the disease reporting system and boosting public health laboratory testing.

    Some of the canceled HHS funding wasn’t slated to end for years, including four grants to strengthen public health in Indian Country, a grant to a Minnesota nonprofit focused on reducing substance use disorders, and a few to universities about occupational safety, HIV, tuberculosis, and more.

    Brent Ewig, chief policy and government relations officer for the Association of Immunization Managers, said the cuts were “the predictable result of ‘boom, bust, panic, neglect’ funding” for public health.

    The association represents 64 state, local, and territorial immunization programs, which Ewig said will be less prepared to respond to disease outbreaks, including measles.

    “The system is blinking red,” Ewig said.

    Methodology

    KFF Health News’ analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grants sought to answer four questions: 1) How many grants have been terminated in the U.S. under the Trump administration since March? 2) Which states saw the most grants cut? 3) What were the grants for? and 4) Did the grant terminations affect blue, red, and purple states differently? This follows a similar analysis by KFF Health News for an article on nationwide NIH grant terminations.

    Our primary data source was a Department of Health and Human Services website showing grant terminations. We compared an initial list of grant terminations from April 3 with one from July 11 to determine how many grants had been restored. The USAspending.gov database helped us track grants by state.

    To classify states politically, we followed the same steps from our April coverage of National Institutes of Health grant terminations. States were “blue” if Democrats had complete control of the state government or if the majority of voters favored Democratic presidential candidates in the last three elections (2016, 2020, 2024). “Red” states were classified similarly with respect to the Republican Party. “Purple” states had politically split state governments and/or were generally considered to be presidential election battleground states. The result was 25 red states, 17 blue states, and eight purple states. The District of Columbia was classified as blue using similar methods.

    This analysis does not account for potential grant reinstatements in local jurisdictions where the funds were awarded indirectly rather than directly from the CDC; it accounts only for the recipients’ location, and excludes grants terminated from Compacts of Free Association states and other foreign entities that received grants directly from the CDC. At least 40 CDC grants were terminated that were meant for global health efforts or assisting public health activities in other nations following the Trump administration’s order for the CDC to withdraw support for the World Health Organization.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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    This story can be republished for free (details).

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Henry Larweh, Rachana Pradhan, Rae Ellen Bichell and KFF Health News

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