Pediatricians split from CDC in childhood vaccine recommendations
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on Monday released its 2026 childhood vaccine schedule. The guidance — endorsed by 12 other independent health organizations — is largely unchanged from last year’s version, but now diverges significantly from the updated immunization schedule announced this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
AAP continues to recommend that all children receive vaccines against 18 infectious diseases, seven more than the CDC’s new guidance. Diseases included in the AAP schedule but not the CDC’s are hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, COVID-19, influenza, meningococcal disease and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
“This is the exact same recommendation that we’ve had all along, the same recommendation the federal government used to agree with,” AAP President Andrew Racine said during a Monday press briefing.
“Nothing has changed. The science hasn’t changed. The distribution of these illnesses hasn’t changed. The risk to the children of the United States hasn’t changed, and so the vaccine schedule hasn’t changed,” he said.
New CDC guidance
Since the second Trump administration began last year, federal health officials have amended national vaccine guidelines, sounded alarms about the alleged danger of vaccines and called for vaccine regulation reform.
When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the helm as Health and Human Services Secretary, he fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), an independent group of physicians and public health officials that develops guidance about the use of vaccines in the country.
The newly constituted committee went on to change recommendations around the chickenpox vaccine — separating it from the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine — and then to amend the longstanding practice of vaccinating all newborns against hepatitis B at birth.
Vinay Prasad, the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, reported in an internal memo circulated late last year that at least 10 children died after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. The memo did not provide substantial details about the FDA’s investigation into vaccine deaths.
In early December, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Kennedy and the CDC to review vaccine recommendations from other developed countries and to amend the U.S. vaccine schedule to align with best practices.
In early January, the CDC unveiled its new, 11-vaccine schedule.
The public health agency did not provide in-depth information about its review, and it is unclear whether ACIP was involved. However, in a public statement, the department said that the U.S. has recommended more childhood vaccine doses than any other peer country, even as trust in public health fell sharply and vaccination rates declined.
The department called for additional randomized trials and studies for individual vaccines, combination shots and timing.
Physicians, public health experts and health organizations, including the AAP, immediately criticized the changes.
“Today’s announcement by federal health officials to arbitrarily stop recommending numerous routine childhood immunizations is dangerous and unnecessary,” the AAP said at the time.
The AAP and other independent physician groups reaffirmed that the vaccine schedule that pre-dated the Trump administration remains the most credible and evidence-based guidance.
“We need our patients and the public to understand that physicians and health care professionals consider vaccines among the most effective tools that we have for protecting health,” Bobby Mukkamala, the president of the American Medical Association (AMA), one of the health organizations that endorsed AAP’s schedule, said during a press conference on Monday.
“The science is clear, vaccines remain the best protection for keeping children and communities healthy,” Mukkamala continued. “That’s why the AMA is endorsing the American Academy of Pediatrics 2026 recommended child and adolescent immunization strategy. It reflects the best available science expert consensus and decades of real world data demonstrating the life saving impact of timely vaccination.”
HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard disagreed.
“AAP is angry that CDC eliminated corporate influence in vaccine recommendations by reconstituting the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices with leading physicians and public health experts and by accepting recommendations from a comprehensive scientific review of U.S. childhood immunization practices conducted under President Trump’s order to examine international best practices in peer developed countries,” Hilliard told SAN Monday.
“The updated CDC childhood schedule continues to protect children against serious diseases while aligning U.S. guidance with international norms,” she continued. “Many peer nations achieve high vaccination rates without mandates by relying on trust, education and strong doctor-patient relationships, and HHS will work with states and clinicians to ensure families have clear, accurate information to make their own informed decisions.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
