Schools already dealing with declining childhood vaccination rates are watching with alarm Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent moves on public health.
Leaders are putting plans in place to handle outbreaks in classrooms after the U.S. this year saw its largest measles outbreak in decades and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped recommending the COVID-19 vaccine for those under 18. Kennedy, meanwhile, has fired all 17 sitting members of CDC’s vaccine advisory panel and also moved to oust the CDC head and other top HHS experts.
The states of Oregon, Washington and California announced on Wednesday that they are creating a public health partnership in an effort to spread the word about the safety and importance of vaccines.
“The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences. California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk,” the states’ governors said in a joint statement.
But some states are taking the opposite approach.
Florida announced Wednesday it is looking to end all vaccine mandates in the state.
“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” said Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s surgeon general.
School districts in the Sunshine State currently require vaccinations for polio, diphtheria, measles, rubella, pertussis, mumps, tetanus and other communicable diseases, similar to others around the country.
“One, we’re going to see a continual reduction in childhood vaccination rates in the United States. Second, we’re going to see increasingly larger pockets of unvaccinated communities, including religious communities, in the United States, that will fan major outbreaks and spread quickly,” said Lawrence Gostin, distinguished professor of global health law at Georgetown University.
“And thirdly, we’re going to see a clear divide between blue and red states … We’re going to see blue states really trying hard to vaccinate all school children, and red states taking vaccines off the list and creating large religious and conscientious exemptions that will blow a big hole through childhood vaccinations in their states,” he added.
This year’s Texas-based measles outbreak, which involved a large number of unvaccinated individuals, hospitalized more than 100 people and left two children dead.
Research released by Johns Hopkins University in June found that measles vaccination rates for children fell in almost 80 percent of U.S. counties after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I can speak for Washington state … I assume this is similar around the country, but our state Department of Health has already put out guidance for schools what you need to do now to be ready, because it’s probably not a question of if you’re going to have an outbreak, it’s when,” said Lynn Nelson, president of the National Association of School Nurses.
Recent data from the CDC shows the vaccinations rates for kindergarteners in the 2024-2025 school year continued to decline, with a dip to 92.1 percent for the diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis vaccine and to 92.5 percent for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and polio shot.
For measles, herd immunity requires around 95 percent to be vaccinated.
The drop in vaccine rates has complicated the situation for school nurses as a new academic year begins.
“It gives immunizations a prominence that we haven’t had in the past,” Nelson said, highlighting the already busy schedules nurses have when the school year kicks off.
Nurses, she said, are “gathering orders for medications and writing care plans and teaching school staff how to manage different potential emergencies with children with chronic health conditions, and traditionally, immunizations, while important, would not be front and center the first weeks of school.”
“We would have most children coming in immunized. We would make note of the ones that weren’t, and then, when things started to settle down a little bit, we’d start reaching out to those parents. We’re in a position now where we can’t really afford to wait,” Nelson added.
Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, has moved aggressively on the issue since taking the reins at HHS. His newly appointed members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel have voted to remove the mercury-based preservative thimerosal from flu shots, which has been in vaccines for 100 years. Kennedy and others have voiced unfounded claims that thimerosal and other vaccine components contribute to autism.
Under Kennedy, the federal government has also stopped recommending the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children and rescinded the shot’s emergency-use authorization.
In a Wednesday letter, more than 1,000 current and former HHS staffers called on Kennedy to resign, pointing to the firing of the CDC director and other moves “compromising the health of the nation.”
“We believe health policy should be based in strong, evidence-based principles rather than partisan politics. But under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, HHS policies are placing the health of all Americans at risk, regardless of their politics,” the letter stated.
HHS did not respond to The Hill’s request for comment.
Kennedy, who is set to appear before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday and will almost certainly face questions on vaccinations and the CDC ouster, has repeatedly insisted he is not trying to take the shots away from anyone who wants them.
In a post on the social platform X last week regarding the COVID-19 shot, he said, “I promised 4 things: 1. to end covid vaccine mandates. 2. to keep vaccines available to people who want them, especially the vulnerable. 3. to demand placebo-controlled trials from companies. 4. to end the emergency.”
But experts say his actions will contribute to declining rates, and that schools will find themselves on the frontlines.
“I think the goal of Robert F Kennedy Jr. is to make vaccines optional. In other words, to make it so that no vaccine is recommended, but rather is part of shared clinical decision making,” said Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, adding “the goal is to eliminate all school vaccine requirements.”
