Public health leaders, distrustful of RFK Jr., stand up project to defend vaccines 

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Helen Branswell , 2025-04-24 15:00:00

Some key public health figures are taking an extraordinary step to try to shore up U.S. vaccination policy, feared to be under threat from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine critic.

The “Vaccine Integrity Project,” which was publicly launched Thursday by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, will be aimed at assessing the best ways for vaccine proponents to safeguard vaccination policy and information, should government recommendations and information sources become “corrupted,” Michael Osterholm, director of the center, said during a press conference.

Though plans for the project are still taking shape, Osterholm said it might go so far as to create a new independent body to evaluate the science supporting individual vaccines — a task that at this point falls squarely in the domain of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Osterholm stressed, though, that the body, if formed, could not serve as a shadow version of the ACIP. That’s because it would not have the same legal authorities as the ACIP, such as deciding which vaccines must be provided through the Vaccines for Children Program. The program provides vaccinations for free to children who qualify; just over half of U.S. children are eligible for vaccines through VFC. 

Margaret Hamburg, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and Harvey Fineberg, a former president of the Institute of Medicine — now known as the National Academy of Medicine — will chair a steering committee that will spend the summer meeting with key stakeholders to decide how the project should proceed. They suggested some of the actions the group may explore include developing clinical guidelines and identifying areas where further research is needed.

“We take up the Vaccine Integrity Project as a precautionary step,” the two wrote in an opinion piece published Thursday in STAT. “Should ACIP or FDA processes or scientific evaluation become compromised, America cannot afford to be left without any organized systems to ensure that evidence grounded in science continues to guide decisions about the use of vaccines.”

Kennedy for years led Children’s Health Defense, an organization that opposes vaccine mandates and argues that vaccines themselves are dangerous despite health officials’ and experts’ statements to the contrary. He also has been involved in a number of personal injury lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers.

Since being confirmed as HHS secretary, Kennedy has stressed that getting vaccinated is a personal choice and has demanded that agency websites under his control highlight that view.

Even though the country is in the grips of one of the largest measles outbreaks in decades — an outbreak that has already claimed three lives — he has refrained from publicly urging parents to get their children vaccinated. Though it is common for public health leaders to strongly advocate for vaccination in such situations, the furthest Kennedy has gone is to say that vaccination is the best way to contain measles. He has also raised safety concerns about the vaccine, and suggested two children who died from measles in West Texas actually succumbed to other illnesses. (In addition to the Texas children, an unvaccinated adult in New Mexico died.)

He has been a vocal critic of the ACIP, alleging that the vast majority of its members have conflicts of interests. There have been fears that he might try to replace members of the committee with people whose views on vaccines are more aligned with his own, or undermine its work in other ways. Earlier this week Politico reported that he is considering unilaterally striking Covid vaccines from the childhood vaccination schedule, a guide devised by the ACIP and the CDC and used by medical professionals to determine which vaccines children should receive, and at what age. If Covid vaccines were no longer listed on the childhood immunization schedule, insurance companies would not have to pay for the vaccines and they would not be eligible for provision through the Vaccines for Children Program.

Osterholm said that the aim of the Vaccine Integrity Project is to try to establish a roadmap for what could be done if government sources of information on vaccines can no longer be trusted. “We all recognize that the vaccine enterprise is at some risk right now,” he said.

The effort is being funded through an unrestricted grant from Alumbra, a foundation established by philanthropist Christy Walton.


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