Céline Gounder, ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed fatal measles cases on CBS News 24/7’s Mornings on Aug. 26. Gounder fact-checked Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz’s comments about vaccines and drug prices on CBS News 24/7’s The Daily Report on Aug. 24. She also discussed food recalls this summer on CBS News 24/7’s The Takeout With Major Garrett on Aug. 24.

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³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner discussed kindergarten vaccination rates on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show on Aug. 25.

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³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ contributor Mark Kreidler discussed the use of artificial intelligence for Medicaid reenrollment on KVPR’s Central Valley Daily on Aug. 24.

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• Read Kreidler’s “AI Is Being Used To Boost Medicaid Enrollment, but Not Without Concerns.”

³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ senior correspondent Julie Appleby discussed the state of the Affordable Care Act on Vox’s Today, Explained podcast on Aug. 24.

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³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ Georgia correspondent Briah Lumpkins discussed the importance of healthcare policy in upcoming elections on WUGA’s The Georgia Health Report on Aug. 21.

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This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

Ethan has autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. He was diagnosed with autism in kindergarten after displaying behavior that concerned his relatives: He paced, flapped his arms, and became consumed with highly specific interests, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and dachshunds.

In a meeting with school administrators and the district to develop his individualized education program, a legal agreement that outlines the support Ethan requires, the team agreed he required a trained paraprofessional to help him regulate his emotions and remain in class, according to complaints Smith filed against the school. However, the complaints alleged, administrators were unwilling to provide the dedicated aide. Instead of implementing the supports her son needed, his school repeatedly removed him from instruction, suspended him, and even called police on him when he was in third grade, Smith wrote.

Smith, a seventh grade science teacher, said she first filed complaints with the school district and the state with these allegations. But when problems persisted, she turned to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, the federal agency tasked with resolving complaints like hers. Smith’s federal complaint included the same account and alleged that the school discriminated against her son because of his disability and race, including deploying pressure tactics to push her Black son out of the public school. In May, the office said it would investigate several of her allegations.

For families who believe their child’s rights were violated based on race, disability, or gender in school, the federal agency often has been one of the main places to turn. But the White House cut its offices and weakened its ability to follow up with cases, as well as slashed funding to that people of color face in for disabilities.

About 1 in 31 U.S. kids by age 8 had been as of 2022. Although previous research on disparities in childhood autism diagnoses has had mixed results, a recent study from the State University of New York at Albany’s Institute for Social and Health Equity found that race, gender, and socioeconomic . Among fourth graders from 2003 to 2022, students of color, girls, low-income students, and multilingual learners were less likely than peers to be identified with autism in school, even as diagnoses rose among children from historically marginalized groups, the study found. A large forthcoming study by the same researchers found the biggest gaps among overlapping identities. Black and Hispanic girls were especially unlikely to be identified.

All this has happened as President Donald Trump’s second administration has put autism in the spotlight. In early August, Trump to whittle down routine immunizations for kids while falsely tying vaccines to autism. He has presented it as a and one of “the most alarming public health developments in history.” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in April 2025 called autism a and he’s lent credence to , including unfounded links to childhood vaccines and .

“This administration is taking us backwards,” said , founder and executive director of The Color of Autism Foundation.

HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in an email that Kennedy’s statements last spring “emphasized the need for increased research into environmental factors contributing to the rise in autism diagnoses, not to stigmatize individuals with autism or their families.” She added that the agency changes are “about making federal support systems work better for children and families.” White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did the press office for the Department of Education.

The cuts to agencies and research have affected parts of the federal government focused on students with disabilities. In March 2025, Trump signed an to dismantle the Department of Education and of its Office for Civil Rights’ 12 regional offices. This June, his administration special-education oversight to HHS and the Office for Civil Rights to the Department of Justice.

“On paper, it’s a reorganization,” said , a former supervising attorney at the Office for Civil Rights who now runs her own education law firm. In practice, she said, it could leave families whose complaints involve overlapping harms — such as race and disability discrimination — caught between agencies built for different jobs. “The hardest thing to prove in these cases is now the thing with no obvious home.”

In April, a year after the order, a Senate committee report from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) concluded that the Office for Civil Rights had in resolutions to discrimination complaints and had a backlog of nearly 12,000 civil rights cases. A recent Washington Post investigation found that the Trump administration “indefinitely froze” many of these cases.

On top of those cuts, the White House vowed to in areas such as school discipline despite research showing that nonwhite and low-income kids disproportionately face barriers to being identified with autism and and other neurodevelopmental diagnoses.

It the Institute of Education Sciences, the Department of Education’s research arm, canceling roughly $900 million in funding for research, including . The administration further data collection on racial disparities in school discipline. The National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation have referencing terms including “race” and “gender,” focused on diversity, equity, or inclusion.

“If we’re cutting any data collection that helps us understand the problem, we’re not going to fix it,” said , director of the Institute for Social and Health Equity at SUNY-Albany, who led the studies on disparities in autism diagnoses. “All we’re doing right now is making the situation worse.”

The nation’s also appears to lack prominent scientists and Black members and has fewer autistic self-advocates than before, said Proctor of The Color of Autism Foundation, who served on the panel before the Trump administration took over. The panel has also been criticized for including .

HHS’ Hilliard said the members “bring decades of experience in autism research and clinical care” and are committed to aligning “federal policy with gold-standard science.”

Disability advocates say federal officials are focused on the wrong priorities.

“All of it creates chaos where chaos is not necessary,” said Cameron Lynch, a former policy analyst for the .

Disability rights advocates fear the changes to special education oversight weaken the federal safety net for autistic students and others with disabilities, making these systems more confusing when families need help enforcing students’ rights.

David Sitcovsky, Autism Speaks’ vice president of advocacy, said families, especially those from marginalized communities, already often lack support for their children to receive a timely diagnosis or services in their school systems.

“The common thread across these issues is access,” Sitcovsky said. “If their child’s rights are not being upheld, do they have a clear path to get help?”

Smith awaits a decision about her federal civil rights case, which she was told could take more than a year amid the backlog, as Ethan has started fourth grade. She wants Ethan transferred to a school better equipped to support him. She has also requested an expedited hearing for a due process complaint she filed with the state.

The family is also navigating battery charges against Ethan, the first of which was filed in March after the school called police on him for allegedly hitting staff. A police report and an email provided by Smith showed that police arrived at her door hours after Smith informed the school district in writing that she had filed a federal discrimination complaint. Smith also pointed out the timing in several of her complaints.

A Polk County Public Schools spokesperson declined to comment, citing student confidentiality. The Florida Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment.

“As a Black mom, you dare not complain about anything,” Smith said. “Once you start advocating for your kids, it’s a problem. But it’s not these kids’ fault that they have a disability.”

Without timely assessments and interventions, , children of color with disabilities such as Ethan are disproportionately at risk of being and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in the Obama and Biden administrations and is now executive director of the Edley Center on Law & Democracy at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law. She said it’s a scary time for families who want to protect their children’s rights.

“People speed if they don’t see a police car,” Lhamon said. “If they think that there’s no one at the federal government watching them in school, we will see an increase in discrimination.”

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

Céline Gounder, ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed the potential of Moderna’s melanoma vaccine breakthrough on CBS News 24/7’s The Daily Report on Aug. 19, drawing on her experience as a former melanoma patient.

³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ senior correspondent Rachana Pradhan discussed how an issue with Deloitte-run information technology systems denied Medicaid coverage to disabled Michiganders on NPR’s Stateside on Aug. 18.

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• Read Pradhan’s “A Deloitte-Run System Denied Medicaid Benefits for Michigan’s Disabled. Now Trump’s Law Piles On,” with reporting from Samantha Liss and Kate Wells.

³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ senior correspondent Renuka Rayasam discussed how hospitals are using wristbands to help reduce maternal deaths on WUGA’s The Georgia Health Report on Aug. 14.

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• Read Andrew Jones’ “Hospitals Say They Found a Tool To Help Reduce Childbirth Risks: Wristbands.”

³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner discussed President Donald Trump’s executive order on childhood vaccines on Slate’s What Next podcast on Aug. 13. Rovner also discussed Medicare on Attitude With Arnie Arnesen on Aug. 11.

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³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ ethnic media editor Paula Andalo discussed how an uninsured patient saved thousands by shopping around for the best surgery price on Radio Bilingüe’s Línea Abierta on Aug. 12.

• , starting at the 31:21 mark.
• Read Andalo’s “Uninsured but Undaunted, a Surgical Patient ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈed the Globe for a Deal.”

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

The state health department wanted to add covid vaccines to the school immunization schedule, a move no state has ever implemented. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then known as a leading vaccine skeptic, had already claimed the covid shot was “the deadliest vaccine ever made” during a poster board presentation at the legislative hearing.

Griffin, a longtime OB-GYN, relied on nearly identical images during her own blistering testimony against the proposal. After the hearing, she expected splashy headlines about Kennedy’s assertions, shifting the public debate over covid policies and vaccines. But that did not happen; one news outlet dismissed him as a . Griffin was shocked.

That is “when I saw how the world worked,” she recalled in a podcast interview. Griffin said she and her husband, a vascular surgeon, decided to take action and “shine light on things.”

Now, Kennedy is the nation’s health secretary, and Griffin holds prominent roles that position her to help carry out his vision.

Last September, Kennedy appointed her to ACIP, the advisory panel for federal immunization policy, where she voted to recommend limiting access to covid vaccines and ending universal newborn immunizations for hepatitis B, steps that a . In December, Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, a conservative Republican and an ally of President Donald Trump’s, named Griffin as the state’s surgeon general.

That makes her the top public health physician in Louisiana, which has the among states.

She is an unconventional choice. Griffin has no background or specialty training in infectious diseases or public health. She is aligned with alternative health movements — including Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA — and has hosted some speakers promoting fringe medical views.

Griffin declined interview requests for this article. “My vision as Louisiana’s surgeon general is to help shift our healthcare system toward preventing disease, not just managing or treating it,” she said in a statement.

Eight months into her tenure, she has yet to make major changes at the health department. She has faced hurdles in her efforts to tighten access to vaccines and limit public health powers, testifying on several bills that legislators rejected.

Still, Griffin’s political rise of Kennedy’s vaccine agenda at the , a vital testing ground for laws aimed at eroding government mandates. State officials have enormous power to set health policy and beat back infectious disease outbreaks. While Griffin’s post is largely a bully pulpit, she could spur real change by advising the governor, state health secretary, and lawmakers.

Some public health and infectious disease experts warned that if Griffin eventually succeeded in curtailing the state’s authority, illnesses and deaths could escalate and Louisiana could be hamstrung in a future pandemic. At one vaccine panel meeting last year, she said it was “unclear” whether vaccines were linked to autism, as Kennedy has suggested. When asked by The New York Times, she declined to say whether she believed any vaccines should be mandated for schoolchildren.

“Someone who has expressed the views she has, who’s now in a public policy position, is very dangerous,” said , the chief executive of the American Public Health Association.

But , a pastor and pediatric cardiologist who serves as chair of the federal vaccine panel, defended Griffin as an “excellent choice” for surgeon general. “No one should be afraid of Dr. Evelyn Griffin having the heart’s desire to take care of the population of Louisiana,” he said in an interview.

While Griffin is on a learning curve as a political novice, she has signaled big ambitions.

She called for “dramatic transformational change” during a public meeting in January, promising to focus on women’s health, rural health, and the root causes of disease. An accompanying said Louisiana would lead through “family, faith, and fearlessness.”

Griffin, 49, often cites her family background in explaining her trajectory.

She was born Ewelina Bulczynski under Communist rule in Poland in 1976. When she was 5, her family defected to a refugee camp in Austria before immigrating to Canada. She and her two brothers later came to the United States to practice as physicians. She has credited this history with giving her a “different perspective” as a doctor and influencing her skepticism of government mandates.

“My parents escaped Communist Poland so that we could come here for the freedoms, such as medical freedom, that this country has,” she told Louisiana lawmakers in 2022.

She met her husband, Joseph Griffin, while they attended Ross University School of Medicine, then located in Dominica. After residency programs in New Orleans, they settled in Baton Rouge and raised two children.

People who have known Griffin during her 20-year career delivering babies and treating women described her as a kind, caring, and smart physician. “Patients loved her,” said Francis Dauterive, who worked with her.

In the years before the pandemic, Griffin had noticed a rise in chronic health problems among her patients. She began studying how nutrition and lifestyle choices could treat and prevent illness, and pursued online training in functional medicine. She started an filled with images of jackfruit sloppy Joes and vegan jambalaya, her dog lounging on a yoga mat, and her backyard strawberry plants.

She also learned of Barbara O’Neill, a Christian wellness figure popular on social media. O’Neill was from giving medical advice in Australia after claiming that cancer was caused by a fungus and could be treated with baking soda, and that vaccines caused “an epidemic of ADHD, autism, epilepsy and cot death.” In a , Griffin called O’Neill a “sage” teacher who was ostracized for focusing on lifestyle solutions to medical issues. She said she kept O’Neill’s advice for a healthy life — including exercise, sunshine, and trust in God — posted on her fridge.

But it was the pandemic that transformed her career. In speeches and interviews, she said she began to question public health guidance and that of her former employer, Ochsner Health, Louisiana’s largest health system, on masking, vaccines, and mandates.

Griffin wanted to share research with colleagues that wasn’t “mainstream” science, studies she said were from contacts in Europe on early covid treatments. Griffin was repeatedly rebuffed, she said.

Eventually, she resigned. “I’m going to stick to my principles,” she later recalled thinking. She now works at the Baton Rouge General health system. Ochsner officials declined to comment.

Louisiana had been hit hard by the pandemic. By December 2021, more than 14,000 people had died from covid. That summer, the Delta surge had killed six pregnant women there over two months, and maternal health organizations were urging vaccination.

But in her testimony to lawmakers that December, Griffin had questioned the vaccine’s safety after health officials had reported . She invoked a public health catastrophe: The , prescribed during pregnancy in Europe (and tested in the United States) in the 1950s, had left thousands of babies with missing or malformed limbs. She also reminded lawmakers of the Nuremberg trials, where Nazi collaborators had been for medical experimentation.

“So everyone has to be on notice when making these types of decisions,” Griffin said, looking at the politicians. The state later dropped plans to require covid vaccines for students.

Griffin and her husband have since embedded themselves in Louisiana’s right-leaning alternative health communities. They have espoused views that, amid the swirl of social-media-fueled wellness trends, pandemic backlash, and widespread dismay over Americans’ poor health, have become ascendant in the second Trump presidency.

Griffin returned to the state Capitol over the next three years to testify for favored causes, including bills supported by Health Freedom Louisiana, a group aligned with Kennedy. to , an antiparasitic drug popular among vaccine skeptics, though numerous studies have shown it is ineffective in treating covid, and future government health mandates, which Griffin has Neither got out of committee. She also testified in support of a ban on gender-transition treatments for minors, which .

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and Louisiana’s near-total took effect, Griffin became an ally of Louisiana Right to Life, the state’s leading anti-abortion group. She recorded videos arguing that the law did not impede pregnancy care. The ban was later and lead to unnecessary cesarean sections, according to doctors and reproductive rights groups.

Griffin and her husband struck up a friendship with Tony Spell, the in Baton Rouge, sometimes joining him for Bible study. Pastor Spell refused to shut his evangelical church during the pandemic, leading to that were overturned by the Louisiana Supreme Court. Griffin called him “an absolute hero.”

She has spoken at annual health freedom gatherings on the church’s sprawling grounds and launched her own wellness events there two years ago. Guests have talked about backyard gardening, naturopathic medicine, the benefits of doulas and raw milk — a — which recently sickened nearly a dozen Louisiana residents.

One speaker, an OB-GYN, said contraception encouraged abortion. Another, an ophthalmologist, questioned the safety of wireless technology, as has Griffin. Quoting O’Neill, the Australian wellness figure, Griffin warned the crowd to “stay away from sunscreen,” adding there were “lots and lots of chemicals” in it.

Spirituality is “the foundation for health,” she said during the event in 2025, and some of her speakers have presented faith in Jesus as essential to being healthy. At the 2024 gathering, Sean Troxclair, an internist who is now her deputy, said that when he was “injured” by a vaccine, “I got with Jesus.” He added, “If you’re not with him, no matter what you do, you’re not going to get better.”

In written comments to the Times, Griffin said that faith was not a prerequisite for good health, and that she “may not share every perspective presented” by her speakers.

Griffin’s appointment is among Gov. Landry’s wider efforts to move Louisiana, already a deeply red state, further to the right. He has supported a who mail abortion pills to Louisiana patients and a to stop the practice nationwide. The U.S. Supreme Court said the pills could still be sent by mail while the FDA case continues in the lower courts.

The governor’s first appointee as surgeon general, , another supporter of Kennedy’s, blocked his staff from promoting any vaccines amid an that killed two babies.

Griffin has begun her tenure more quietly, seeking ties with the state’s medical community while trying to find her place in a health department hierarchy where the secretary still wields much of the power.

For her staff, she’s recruited figures from wellness and vaccine-skeptical circles, including Troxclair and Kathleen Willis, an internist who has of the childhood vaccine schedule, .

A surprising presence in the department is Griffin’s husband, whom she’s called “like-minded.” Though he is not employed by the agency, he has joined her appointments with state and federal officials and participated in department meetings, sometimes providing feedback or asking questions, according to two people present at the sessions. Griffin has also placed him on a . Griffin said in a statement that he was “not involved in formal decision-making.”

Bruce Greenstein, the state health secretary, introduced the couple during a public meeting in January, saying, “We basically get two doctors for the price of one.” In May, Griffin’s husband joined the governor on a to Greenland, which Trump has periodically .

Griffin’s beliefs represent a shift away from public health policies that prioritize the protection of the wider community in favor of ones that prioritize individual choice. Like Kennedy, she has said this is necessary to restore faith in public health systems battered by the anger over pandemic restrictions.

Such a reframing of the government’s role would upend long-standing public health principles and risk harming society’s most vulnerable, said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“Are we in no way responsible for people who we are going to sit next to on a bus or get into a crowded elevator?” he asked. “Do we have no sense of responsibility to other members of society?”

Florida’s former health secretary and surgeon general, whose vaccine mandates, said rising vaccine skepticism was already contributing to and . “This is something that our country will regret as we start seeing our sons, daughters, neighbors, friends, cousins, pay the price,” he said in an interview.

Even though Griffin has allied herself with some lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature, she testified on three bills this year that failed to proceed. One would have created new for vaccines — including banning mothers from agreeing to vaccines for 12 hours after giving birth, when Griffin said hormones and other factors could impede their thinking.

Another would have the government’s ability to require vaccines, testing, or masks in a future outbreak, mandates that Griffin testified infringed on individual rights and were discriminatory. A , her own proposal, would have given her office sweeping access to all medical records in the state, which are now protected by medical privacy laws.

Gov. Landry did not publicly push for the measures, a sign that they may not be priorities for his administration. A majority of Louisiana voters support school vaccine mandates, according to polls by and the . Most proposals to weaken vaccine laws also this year.

Since her appointment, Griffin has traveled the state to meet with residents. In June, she and her husband wandered through a wellness event, sponsored by the Northshore Alternative Health Alliance, in Mandeville. She had been invited to give the keynote address by Abigail Licatino, a member of Health Freedom Louisiana who has said that .

Booths featured local farmers, reiki practitioners, functional medicine doctors, chiropractors, spiritual healers, and purveyors of peptides, supplements, and IV treatments. The event represented some of the “holistic approaches” Griffin said she planned to highlight as surgeon general.

In speeches before her appointment, Griffin had offered a far-reaching vision. While conventional medicine would still play an indispensable role, she said, the current health system was failing Americans and would “collapse.” The health freedom and wellness movements would help show “the path forward.”

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The New York Times’ Kitty Bennett, Sheelagh McNeill, and Kirsten Noyes contributed research for this article.

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While the released Aug. 10 does not directly mention autism, Trump’s demand to limit vaccine recommendations has puzzled leading medical groups, doctors, and political analysts alike. The directive landed less than 90 days before midterm elections, which Trump’s own could be jeopardized by anti-vaccine rhetoric.

“The political timing, particularly for members on the Republican side in swing districts, is not good,” said , a former Republican congressman and retired doctor.

Trump’s willingness to gamble on the issue underscores the president’s impatience for his health secretary to deliver on a promise that he’d pinpoint a culprit for the sharp rise in autism diagnoses.

After more than a year, Kennedy and his close, anti-vaccine allies have blown past a deadline to turn up definitive answers in a multimillion-dollar research mission shrouded in secrecy, leaving the president to recycle debunked notions as he publicly assaults vaccines.

“This is about the most closed project that I’ve ever heard of,” Helen Tager-Flusberg, a renowned psychologist who runs the Coalition of Autism Scientists, said of Kennedy’s autism research efforts. “They’re treating it like the Manhattan Project in the 1940s. This is as opaque as it could possibly be.”

The White House did not answer questions about what research is informing the president’s opinions or which vaccines he believes could be linked to autism.

The Department of Health and Human Services said the president’s action builds on the agency’s January announcement that it was reassessing the nation’s vaccine schedule and recommended reducing childhood immunizations based on peer countries’ guidance. However, no other peer country separates the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine as the president has now ordered.

“As the secretary said, HHS will examine every biologically plausible hypothesis, follow the evidence wherever it leads, and make findings and actions available as they are ready,” HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in an email.

Trump Dreams of a ‘Big Day’

Trump especially has been enamored with finding autism’s cause, saying in August 2025 that it will be “such a big day” after Kennedy assured his boss that he had identified “clearly, almost certainly” factors causing autism that would soon be publicly revealed.

Decades of existing research and scientific studies show genetics is a leading factor. — including prenatal exposure to pollution, the age of the father, and maternal health — can also play a role.

But Kennedy has flatly rejected that science, often calling autism a “.” As health secretary, he has looking for root causes in a research effort that’s offered no public status updates and few details about who, or even which agency, is leading the effort.

Prominent autism advocacy groups, scientists, and researchers have not been consulted on the project. Nor have career scientists working at the federal health agencies, according to two officials ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ is not naming because they were not authorized to speak on the record about the matter.

Requests to meet with Kennedy on the issue have been ignored, said Delancy Allred, public policy manager at the Autism Society. Allred said that other federal agencies, such as the Department of Education, have engaged more directly with leading autism advocacy groups during meetings.

“No one has gotten to Kennedy. No one has gotten to the secretary level, that I’m aware of,” Allred said. “I think he likes to isolate himself with folks that are in his domain and group.”

Indeed, Kennedy has relied on allies, who’ve joined him over the years on a crusade against childhood vaccines, to lead the agency’s autism research and strategy efforts. It’s a top priority for his closest adviser, , a former environmental activist and , according to the unnamed sources. Spear did not respond to requests to talk about the autism study.

William “Reyn” Archer III — a former Texas health official, trained obstetrician-gynecologist, and whom Kennedy hired as a senior adviser — has spent months acquiring Americans’ medical records for political appointees to research a link between vaccines and autism. The National Institutes of Health under Trump has also issued about $50 million in grants to scientists at universities around the country for autism research, although most of the studies are not scheduled to be completed for a few years.

In January, Kennedy also restocked the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee — an under-the-radar but influential group — with a full new slate of 21 members. His appointees include parents of autistic children, vaccine skeptics, and a doctor who was sued for “dangerous” autism treatment. It has met only once during Trump’s current term.

Late last month, the committee abruptly dropped a 336-page strategic plan that echoes some of Kennedy’s talking points: Federal researchers have focused too much on genetic links to autism, the plan suggests.

Diagnoses of autism, a that affects how people communicate and behave, the past couple of decades. The increase is attributed partly to and screening, a more expansive definition of the disorder, and parents having children at a later age, .

Trump and Kennedy have falsely claimed that the rise in diagnoses is isolated among American children — though diagnoses have dramatically and .

Despite his efforts to launch new research, Kennedy has provided Trump with no conclusive explanation for these increases. Trump began publicly pressing his health secretary on the issue last month when he asked Kennedy: “How are you doing on the autism research?”

Kennedy replied, “We will have an answer for you,” before Trump cut him off.

“That is so important,” the president pressed.

Kennedy’s vaccine agenda has been stymied, in part, by the White House’s infighting. Behind the scenes, White House officials have spent months waving Kennedy off his vaccine agenda amid a historic wave of measles infections.

With his Aug. 10 Oval Office signing, Trump made clear Kennedy’s vaccine agenda remains a top priority. The signing also came at a politically convenient moment: The Senate broke for a five-week recess, just after the White House secured the votes it needed for crucial confirmations of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Erica Schwartz and Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Kennedy Misfires

Many of Kennedy’s claims so far on autism have not withstood scientific scrutiny. Last year, the health secretary said Tylenol use in pregnancy can lead to autism. A major new study in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA debunked the connection — a political stumble for Trump, who had publicly repeated the claim and urged women not to take the pain reliever.

Kennedy also offered that circumcision could be a cause during a Cabinet meeting in October. published in August in JAMA Pediatrics found no such evidence. He said in 2025 that a linked the in autism. However, his remarks misrepresented the findings; the he referred to later studied thimerosal exposure in vaccines and .

And Kennedy for research that was underway to search for autism’s causes, including potential environmental sources.

Pressed on details about the administration’s work studying autism, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya admitted that no conclusion had been reached during an interview .

“If you ask me, as a scientist, do I know why we’ve seen this rise in autism? I’ll tell you I don’t know the answer to that question,” he said Aug. 9.

Seated at his desk in the Oval Office the next day, Trump repeatedly made the connection between autism and vaccines just before signing the executive order calling for fewer childhood shots.

Appearing alongside Trump, Kennedy seemed intent on quelling expectations that HHS would produce results expeditiously. He told the president he was racing to find answers before the end of his term.

“Mr. President, you have told us you want answers. So do I,” Kennedy said. “We have just over two years to finish the work, and I know you’re impatient, and we are moving with an urgency that that deadline demands.”

While Trump has repeatedly claimed there’s a link between autism and vaccines, he has not revealed which of the routine vaccinations he believes might be to blame, and he praised the polio vaccine as “amazing” during the White House event.

White House officials declined to answer questions about the status of Kennedy’s efforts to identify the cause of autism during a call a few hours later.

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

Céline Gounder, ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed Americans’ skepticism toward public health experts and President Donald Trump’s executive order on childhood vaccines on CBS News 24/7 and CBS News’ CBS Mornings, respectively, on Aug. 11.

On Aug. 10, Gounder discussed the risks and benefits of egg freezing on CBS Mornings.

Gounder also discussed organ donation and scientists’ creation of new viruses with AI on CBS Mornings and CBS News 24/7, respectively, on Aug 7.

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This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

If he wanted to learn more about an outbreak of measles or hantavirus, he would pore over the weekly CDC report that came by email. If a patient’s family was traveling to Africa or Asia, he would check the latest CDC vaccine recommendations for overseas travel. And if a family was worried about potential side effects from a shot, he could always send them to the CDC’s website to bolster his argument to get the immunization.

Public trust in the CDC has in the road , but for medical professionals, Snyder said, “the CDC used to be, worldwide, the most trusted source of information pertaining to public health and infectious disease.”

Yet even doctors began losing trust, Snyder said, after Donald Trump was elected president again. Trump quickly tapped longtime anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC.

Within months of his confirmation as secretary, Kennedy had of the CDC’s vaccine advisory board and replaced them with , some of them prominent vaccine skeptics.

“It turned into a completely unreputable source of information,” Snyder said.

This rupture of scientific trust in the CDC has put many pediatricians like Snyder in a bind, as they no longer turn to the country’s preeminent public health agency and instead search for ways to fill the information gap. Some doctors are launching their own vaccine education efforts, sometimes in collaboration with local public health departments.

On Jan. 5, the CDC from the recommended for all children — against the advice of major medical groups like the . The as the agency dropped rotavirus, covid-19, influenza, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and meningococcal disease from the list. The agency did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

In March, after , a federal judge to revert to the previous guidelines. The administration the judge’s decision.

The back-and-forth “creates a whole bunch of confusion in the public,” Snyder said. “And it’s very confusing even for healthcare providers.”

So he’s trying to be clear to patients about what the evidence shows, even if that means going against the federal government. His practice, Amherst Pediatrics, to say: “The CDC is no longer considered to be a reliable or legitimate source of information.”

“It’s shocking that we have to say that,” Snyder said. Instead, the site directs families to get information from their own doctor, the state of Massachusetts, or nongovernmental medical organizations including the AAP.

In the exam room, Snyder is having more tense conversations with families. He said some parents are explicit that they want to hew to what the CDC recommends. “Even if they don’t say that, we have definitely seen increasing hesitancy and questions,” he said. “All of that interferes with us protecting children.”

On a spring afternoon, several of Snyder’s young patients came into Amherst Pediatrics for routine visits.

“Let’s talk about vaccines,” Snyder said to one mother, Tenzin Dekey, who was there with her 1-year-old. Snyder explained that her son was due for the , which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella, in addition to the chickenpox, hepatitis A, and flu vaccines.

“So that’s four shots, two in each leg,” he said, as he handed Dekey CDC information sheets about the vaccines. She glanced at them and agreed to the shots.

Ironically, the information sheets are stamped with the CDC’s logo — — even though Amherst Pediatrics has explicitly directed patients away from the CDC. Snyder said he hates that disconnect.

“This has been a source of heated discussion,” he said. “How can we be saying, ‘Do not trust the CDC when it comes to vaccines,’ yet here is the information we’re giving our own patients when they’re in the office about vaccines?”

Another mother brought her 14-year-old son for his annual physical. She asked to be identified by only her first name, Melissa, so she could freely discuss her family’s private health issues.

Snyder recommended the , which helps . Although Melissa had refused the HPV vaccine in a previous visit, this time she left the decision up to her son. He agreed to it. But for other vaccines, she wouldn’t budge.

“I’m a hard ‘no’ on the covid,” she told Snyder.

“We could talk about that if you want,” he suggested.

“I don’t need to talk about it,” she replied.

After the appointment, Melissa said she just doesn’t know whom to trust anymore when it comes to vaccine safety. She used to get information from the CDC but no longer does.

“I worry that it’s been politicized a lot, and I don’t like politics,” she said. “Now I prefer to hear things from people, healthcare professionals.”

Such distrust and confusion inspired Snyder to join an independent vaccine information campaign, along with other pediatric practices and health departments in the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts.

The campaign’s website, which is promoted in Snyder’s waiting room, is called . It sidesteps the CDC and highlights advice from local doctors and national medical groups, . Valley Vax bought ads on the sides of buses in Western Massachusetts to promote the site, with the faces and testimonials of local doctors including Snyder.

“We wanted something that felt familiar and appealing and that they might be more likely to trust,” said , director of Amherst’s public health department, who coordinates the Valley Vax effort.

She said the organizers decided not to criticize the CDC outright.

“Some information from the CDC is reasonable. Like they are doing a good job of tracking influenza-like illness rates in the country,” Malin said. “It’s important not to discount an organization completely.”

Still, she said it’s the first time she’s had to contradict health information from the CDC. “That’s not a comfortable place to be in at all,” she said.

Other health leaders are also banding together to get out evidence-based information. At the state level, California, Hawai‘i, Oregon, and Washington — frustrated with the CDC — operate the to “ensure the public has access to credible information.” And governors of 14 states and Guam set up the in response to declining trust in federal health agencies.

Locally, some public health departments are partnering with community leaders to reach people who have stopped listening to government institutions but “do have strong connections within their faith community or do have strong connections within their neighborhood,” said , a spokesperson for the .

Like Amherst, many local health departments now direct people to professional medical organizations instead of the CDC, Casalotti said, because advice from those groups may change slightly as the science evolves, but it’s unlikely to change with each lawsuit against the government.

This article is from a partnership that includes , , and ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ.

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

The Consumer Product Safety Commission, responsible for tracking and issuing recalls of dangerous products sold in the U.S., began discreetly pressuring hospital executives this year to share personally identifiable health data with a private contractor. But hospital lawyers and other industry experts have questioned the agency’s authority to collect, its ability to safeguard such a swath of sensitive information, and whether it has followed the legal process to overhaul its surveillance system.

After ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ asked the CPSC about the new system, the the program on July 21. Left unmentioned, however, is the alarm it has raised among hospital executives, as well as the nature and extent of the agency’s data demands.

In a stark departure from its product-focused mission, the agency’s goal is to obtain millions of Americans’ medical records from emergency room visits for most injuries, from a broken bone to a childhood vaccine reaction or even a suicide attempt, according to documents and emails obtained by ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ, as well as interviews with five people involved or familiar with the discussions.

A CPSC official also insisted in the emails that the institutions provide all ER patients’ identifiable information — such as names, addresses, diagnoses, and other personal details — to the contractor, Konza Health, for analysis. In correspondence with , Konza representatives described participation as “mandatory” or “required.”

As a condition of viewing the correspondence, ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ agreed not to republish some of the emails it obtained.

The CPSC wants at least 100 hospitals to start sending detailed medical records by the end of this year, according to an .

“The whole thing is troubling,” said Sharona Hoffman, a professor of health law at Case Western Reserve University who noted that giving a private entity access to a sweeping collection of data will introduce risks to patient privacy. “If this company really is collecting identifiable information, that is worrisome for patients.”

The new project was launched amid upheaval at the traditionally independent agency, which is without a governing board since President Donald Trump fired the CPSC’s three Democratic board members. Nearly 1 in 5 career staffers left the CPSC in the first 16 months of the new administration, according to a ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ analysis of federal workforce data.

The initiative also comes as the Trump administration has sought unprecedented access to millions of Americans’ medical records, with the Office of Personnel Management requesting federal workers’ sensitive health information and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. using a private organization to collect more medical records for his studies on vaccines and autism.

Steve Roney, CPSC spokesperson, said in an emailed statement on July 10 that the CPSC is “modernizing” its surveillance system. Asked whether the CPSC will file complaints against hospitals that do not participate, he said only that while the previous system “operated as a voluntary program, the ability of hospitals to opt out limited the sample size and usefulness of the data.”

Roney also acknowledged that the agency had not yet notified the public, as “required by law.”

Federal law requires the agency to provide notice and a public comment period before requesting information from 10 or more entities, a step it has not taken despite plans for 100 hospitals to join the surveillance system. ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ independently confirmed with over a dozen hospitals that they had been approached.

Federal public health authorities that private health data be reported. But CPSC officials have that if hospitals decline to share data with the new surveillance system, they could be subject to strict penalties from a data-sharing regulation known as “information blocking.”

Yet some hospital executives say they are reluctant to share patients’ sensitive data because they’re concerned about a different violation — that of .

AI Takes Over

Dozens of ERs across the country already participate in the CPSC’s voluntary National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, or NEISS, through which trained hospital workers report injuries involving consumer products, almost always stripped of patients’ identifiable information. The system helps the CPSC identify products, such as baby loungers, toys, and household appliances, with a pattern of injuring consumers.

The new injury surveillance program goes much further.

At a toy industry trade event in February, acting CPSC Chairman Peter Feldman said the agency is “investing in AI-enabled workflows that improve the quality and quantity of injury surveillance data, while also building up digital infrastructure to handle a massive new volume of electronic health records.”

Konza Health, a Kansas-based organization that runs the state’s health data exchange, will automatically pull and analyze medical records of all patient visits from ERs nationwide. Konza won a worth up to $15.9 million with the CPSC last fall.

In email correspondence with hospital technology officials, Konza Health President and CEO Laura McCrary also has described ERs’ participation as “required,” stipulating that they share patients’ records with identifying information.

McCrary told ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ by email that the company is not using AI to process the records it receives, saying instead that Konza will use “advanced analytic parsing and filtering capabilities.” Roney, the CPSC spokesperson, did not answer questions about the .

For years, agency officials moving away from human contractors and automating NEISS to save time and money.

But without workers on-site, hospital staffers may no longer receive training to determine what clinical information is important to include for the CPSC. In short, the changes could dilute the quality of the product safety data the agency collects.

“They want to suck in as much data as possible, but I’m not sure how thoughtful they’re being about what is collected and what is actually needed by the agency,” said former CPSC chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric, one of the Democratic appointees Trump fired last year.

Record Number of Career Staff Left CPSC Last Year

The Consumer Product Safety Commission overhauled its National Electronic Injury Surveillance System on the heels of its largest exodus of career employees in at least a decade.

Source: <a href=” of Personnel Management</a>

Wanted: Injuries From Vaccines and Stingrays

The CPSC’s new data collection appears to contradict its own 214-page , which instructs hospitals not to include identifiable information “such as names, birthdates, or addresses” when reporting cases.

The agency is supposed to receive patients’ identifying information only when needed for follow-up investigations, which happens in fewer than 1% of reported cases, according to the manual.

The CPSC has also historically limited the records it collects to minimize privacy violations in case of a data breach.

The risk is not hypothetical: From 2017 to 2019, the agency improperly released personal health information of around 30,000 people, a disclosure that a top Republican at the time

Konza, however, will receive even more sensitive information on many more people. McCrary said in a statement that Konza will remove patients’ names, addresses, and medical information “not needed by CPSC” before sharing records with the agency.

Leaving a private organization to collect sensitive information introduces risks, including that it could be stolen or used for business purposes, said Hoffman, the Case Western professor.

“Very often, they will use information for marketing because now they’re going to know what conditions people have,” she said.

Roney said that its contract with Konza, which has not been made public, prohibits the organization from selling or marketing the data it collects.

The CPSC’s manual also identifies types of ER visits that should not be reported to the CPSC, which has jurisdiction over only certain consumer products. Excluded injuries are those caused by food, illegal drugs, medical devices, alcohol, or plants, as well as injuries that did not involve consumer products — such as a cut from a rock or broken bones from a fall on the ground — and suicide attempts by adults.

But in a to one hospital and reviewed by ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ, Konza set no such limits on the information it would gather from ER records and said it would hold on to patient health information for at least 30 days.

In an email sent to hospital technology officials, McCrary wrote that Konza would provide the CPSC with records when a patient is treated in the ER for any of more than 10,000 conditions. The expansive list of diagnostic codes Konza provided in the email includes injuries that do not involve consumer products.

Child injuries resulting from “poisoning by” vaccines or contact with stingrays, neither of which is regulated by the CPSC, are included in the list.

A limited number of hospitals once shared deidentified data on all injuries — regardless of product involvement — through the NEISS using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s injury-tracking program. But the CDC halted that data collection, after funding and staffing were cut last year, and has not restarted it.

Pressure on Hospitals

CPSC Chief Data Officer Elizabeth Puchek, who joined the agency late last year after engineering U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ data system, has told hospitals in emails that they must seek an exemption from the program if they decline to share patients’ emergency room records with Konza.

The CPSC’s targeted outreach has included some of the nation’s largest urban and rural health systems, as well as small, publicly owned hospitals.

Staff members at Mary Greeley Medical Center in Ames, Iowa, said that Konza and federal officials told them their participation in the new program was mandatory. The hospital, which has long participated in NEISS, signed a new contract in April to share its ER records with Konza.

Yet the hospital is reevaluating its participation after being notified that the funds it received to participate in NEISS were “no longer available,” spokesperson Steve Sullivan said.

Several hospital executives, lawyers, and others have raised doubts about the CPSC’s claimed authority.

Harborview Medical Center spokesperson Susan Gregg said the Seattle hospital’s emergency room has “voluntarily submitted de-identified data for many years, but we are not obligated to report this information.”

In Boston, Mass General Brigham has declined to participate in the new program, with spokesperson Kelly Mitchell saying that “to protect patient privacy, we are unable to provide these medical records.”

Henry Ford Health in Detroit; St. Luke’s in Boise, Idaho; and Sanford Health based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota — which together handle over a million ER visits a year — are among the health systems that have been approached but not yet entered into an agreement with Konza, according to representatives. Several of the nation’s busiest hospital systems targeted for the program — including the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, and Baylor Scott & White Health in Texas — declined to answer questions about whether they’re participating.

Hoehn-Saric, the agency’s former chairman, said he was surprised that the CPSC would insist that hospitals provide identifiable records from all emergency room visits.

“This idea that they can simply demand patient information from a hospital and that the hospital would provide it — I really don’t understand the basis for that,” he said.

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

For the first time in a quarter century, the U.S. no longer meets a main criterion for having eliminated measles as a public health threat. That status hinges on sporadic outbreaks fizzling out within a year. Utah’s outbreak has lasted for longer, since .

Nearly 400 people have been hospitalized with measles in the U.S. this year and last, three people have died, and at least three suffered with .

This month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is set to finalize a comprehensive study of the nation’s measles situation, examining data from January 2025 through June 2026.

“I don’t think we could say with a straight face that there hasn’t been transmission over the past 12 months,” said a CDC scientist with knowledge of the agency’s measles report. (³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ agreed not to name the researcher, who is concerned about retaliation.) The researcher said a national committee of measles specialists will review the CDC’s internal report, which then goes to the Pan American Health Organization, a group that evaluates the measles elimination status of countries throughout North, South, and Central America and the Caribbean.

PAHO will make at an annual meeting this fall, but scientists say the writing is on the wall. “The assessment for elimination isn’t until November, but that is a scheduling issue, basically,” said Anne Schuchat, who led the CDC’s immunization and respiratory disease group from 2006 to 2015.

“It’s just so sad, because some people will get brutally ill,” she said of measles’ return. “This is a wake-up call.”

Pediatricians in Utah have been on the front lines as measles and other vaccine-preventable ailments have returned to the U.S. In interviews with ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ, six doctors shared insights on this new era of vaccine hesitancy — and what could be done to turn the situation around.

The conversations have been edited for clarity.

On Unvaccinated Children Hospitalized With Measles Complications

Emilie Morris, a hospital pediatrician in Salt Lake County and Utah County: When children come in, they’re often bent over. We call it tripoding, which is particular to upper respiratory infections and airway swelling. They have a rash — viruses cause rashes all the time — but in this context, the kid is hunched over, mouth open, drooling, crying, maybe not even producing tears, because they’re so dehydrated. Really labored breathing, kind of tugging in their belly, tugging between their ribs. Their eyes look kind of glazed over. It’s like they’re seeing through you.

Nathan Money, a hospital pediatrician in Salt Lake County and Utah County: If the child has a fever or trouble breathing, and they’re unvaccinated, I have to be way more aggressive from a medical standpoint, because they are at higher risk of having life-threatening illnesses. I have to do more blood work, or lumbar punctures to rule out meningitis. I have to do things which are painful, and it’s traumatic for the families.

I tell them, “Because your child doesn’t have vaccines, I have to be more worried about conditions like sepsis or meningitis, so therefore I need to do more workup.” The last thing I want to do is miss something. These are parents who love their children. They always tell me, “Do what you need to do to make sure my child is safe.”

On Treating Unvaccinated Children Hospitalized for Measles

Trahern W. Jones, a pediatric infectious disease specialist based in Salt Lake City: So I’m coming into a room and just hearing the most awful barking cough, just a cough and a high-pitch stridor as the child is trying to breathe. And he’s just coughing so hard it just makes you feel short of breath. He looks like he’s been beaten down for days, but he can’t rest, because the cough keeps him awake.

The parents tell me they’re not anti-vaccine, but in the past, somebody they know had a reaction to a vaccine — or something they thought was a reaction to a vaccine — and so they paused vaccines when the child was a baby. They were planning to catch up later.

In another case, the parent was stunned by how awful it was. I asked them what they knew about measles before their child was sick, and they said the only person who’d ever taught them anything about measles was their grandmother who had taken care of her kids with measles ages ago. That’s something I’ve heard from other parents. It’s such an awful illness. Even the best possible course is going to be one of the worst diseases most children ever go through.

There are multiple facets to it. Physically, the child has been beat down for multiple days by this virus. The parents don’t get to sleep, because they’re nursing their child. Then there’s the emotional component because the parent is regretting not getting the vaccine, not realizing how bad this was, and then feeling deeply ashamed, trying to reconcile with family members who are really upset at them for not getting their child vaccinated.

(Amy Maxmen/³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ)

Morris: One child was from a family that was uninsured because they didn’t feel that they would need to use the medical system. They were faced with the high burden of cost of our healthcare system. The cost was playing into the parents’ decision on whether or not their child should receive necessary medical care. I said something like: “Please don’t go home. Your child needs oxygen. She has pneumonia. We will figure out a way to pay for this, because we acknowledge what we do is expensive.”

On top of that, the parent had several other children in the home who weren’t vaccinated. It was past the period where we could intervene with vaccines to try to prevent infection, so then our recommendation was to quarantine their children at home for 21 days: “Don’t interact with anybody else in your community. Don’t go to the grocery store, even with a mask. Please take this seriously.”

It takes time for parents to understand the level of concern I have, even when their child is physically ill in the hospital requiring ongoing care. It’s pretty indicative of the breakdown of trust between physicians and families. I say, “This is the gravity or severity of your child’s situation and how serious we need to be about protecting other people.”

It’s frustrating. How can I make people understand I have a very genuine concern for their child? And I know they share that concern, but maybe it’s not the same degree of concern, because they don’t understand the illness and how severe it can become.

Money: It’s heartbreaking to see these children struggling to survive when measles could have been easily prevented by a safe mechanism that is readily available and well studied. These are well-meaning parents who love their children, who have gotten bad information from federal leadership or from online sources. The saddest part to me is when I am caring for a child and the parent says, “I didn’t know that this could get so bad.”

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On Conversations With Parents Who Don’t Vaccinate Their Children

Tim Duffy, a pediatrician in Salt Lake County: A lot of families aren’t aggressively anti-vax, but they’re hesitant. Younger parents who grew up in the digital age have done their research — “research” in quotation marks — for months. And they keep getting confirmation of their concerns on social media. They think they’re doing what’s best for their child.

I’ve told families: “You could do nothing I say as a pediatrician. You could sleep your child on their stomach. You could not put them in a car seat or, when they’re older, not use seat belts. You could do nothing I say, and for your individual child, they will probably be OK. But from my standpoint, where I’m taking care of thousands of kids, within a system that takes care of hundreds of thousands of kids, we will have bad outcomes. These children will show up at our facilities, and it’s so sad.”

Pediatrician in southern Utah whom ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ agreed not to name, because of concerns about harassment after being targeted by anti-vaccine activists in the past: A lot of parents are concerned about autism. I’ve told them that I’d be very concerned if there was any evidence that what we’re doing is causing autism. But if vaccines were causing autism, we should see more cases of autism in vaccinated kids compared to unvaccinated kids, and we’re just not seeing that.

I’ve also had families who say they want to be natural, or that they’re concerned about what is in the shots. A frequently asked question is: “Did you vaccinate your children?” I say that knowing what I know, I’m confident giving this to my kids. They’re all vaccinated.

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On the Influence of Politics on Vaccine Hesitancy

Jones: Vaccines have become a political football. That wasn’t true 20 years ago. But now it’s used to drive a wedge between groups of people, which is unfortunate. Vaccines are one of the main reasons why we don’t have to worry about losing our kids.

Southern Utah pediatrician: People don’t know who to believe. If politics comes up, I tell parents that my messaging on vaccines is not politically motivated. When parents ask about changes to the vaccine schedule, I’m transparent. [In January, the Department of Health and Human Services reducing the number of vaccines given to children. A few months later, a federal judge blocked those changes.]

I’ve said there was a process for the approval of immunizations through ACIP [the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices], which is made up of scientists, public health experts, and doctors, and all those people were let go, and a new panel was selected. A couple of individuals changed the recommendation outside of the time-tested, evidence-based process for evaluating vaccines. That raises concerns for me as a doctor. I tell parents that the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and several other professional organizations have issued statements saying that these changes are not based on evidence.

Ellie Brownstein, a pediatrician in Salt Lake County and president-elect of the Utah chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics: I avoid talking about politics, but what’s being said has added another layer to our work. One family asked me about changes to vaccine recommendations, so instead of just telling them what immunizations are due, I talk with them about why physicians and researchers have followed a different schedule for years, about the reasoning and the science behind it. I explain that I trust these experts over someone without a lot of experience.

Money: People are not vaccinated, because they’ve lost trust in the medical community. They’re placing trust elsewhere. Rebuilding trust is a complicated process, but it comes from consistent messaging at every level, from the pediatrician to local health departments to community leaders, city leadership, district leadership, religious leadership, educational leadership.

We need consistent messaging from state leadership, which has been pretty absent. I want to see commercials on TV about the safety of the MMR [measles, mumps, and rubella] vaccine and the dangers of the measles, sponsored by my state leadership. I’d like to see this on billboards and in schools, in public buildings and grocery stores. I want to go to a sports event and see messages about the measles and the MMR vaccine. Right now, people have to go out of their way to find information from reputable sources.

We also need policy changes to support vaccination. This train is going in the wrong direction, and it can feel like a helpless situation, because we’re just not seeing the public messaging and leadership that’s needed to turn this around.

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Advice on Talking With Parents Who Don’t Vaccinate Their Children

Jones: Approach them with as much compassion as you possibly can. Ask open-ended questions to learn about their experiences that led them to have these concerns. I think it’s really important to not come down on them, citing facts and figures and pointing to guidelines on why they need to get their kids vaccinated. But try to direct their attention to the fact that you’re a real person with your own real experiences and knowledge. I point out to families that I have my own kids, and I would never recommend something for your kids that I wouldn’t do for mine.

Southern Utah pediatrician: I’ve learned that if you come down hard, you’re going to lose people who need care. My number one goal now is to build bridges and maintain a relationship with families, because that’s what’s going to allow me to convince some of them.

I approach people differently depending on where they are. Parents who are very skeptical or anti-vax will say no when I tell them their child is due for immunizations. I’ll say: “Fine. You guys get to choose. You’re the parents. But I’m curious to know what your reasoning is.” Sometimes they’re just like, “It’s something I’ve decided.” They don’t want to have a conversation.

It’s a good day if I can have a conversation with someone who doesn’t want to vaccinate, even if I don’t convince them. I try to help them think through things rather than shoving anything down their throat. When they’re done talking, I’ll ask, “Can I share my perspectives on this?” Some will say yes enthusiastically, and others will say yes because they’re being polite.

A lot of parents aren’t sure what to do, and those are the people I focus most of my time on. I focus our conversation on their specific concerns, and I’m open about specific side effects that different immunizations can have. For example, I’ll tell them that some children get a fever after a vaccine, which is OK. The fever is not harmful, but it can make babies feel crummy as their body is building up antibodies against viruses and bacteria.

Brownstein: I don’t like the idea of excluding unvaccinated kids from my practice. I know some do that. But what that does is it ends any future discussion. I can’t keep talking with parents about vaccines if I kick them out of my practice, and if these parents find like-minded doctors, this situation will get worse.

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On Being on the Front Lines of Measles’ Comeback in the U.S.

(Amy Maxmen/³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ)

Money: I wish that people could see what I see. Everyone else sees what people post on Instagram. Or they think, “Someone I know had measles when they were a kid and they were fine.” But as a hospital-based pediatrician, I see what happens when things go poorly. I see what happens when children with measles aren’t able to breathe on their own, and they’re in a hospital bed with a cannula in their nose, struggling to breathe, an IV in their arm because they can’t drink on their own. And the child is terrified, and the parents are scared that their child might die.

It’s heartbreaking as a pediatrician and as a father to know that the entire situation could have been easily prevented.

Duffy: Even though parents say vaccination is their choice, I still feel personally responsible if something bad happens that’s preventable, because I feel like I didn’t say the right thing, I didn’t ask the right questions. Maybe I let it drop because of the look on a parent’s face.

Morris: Every pediatrician I know cares so deeply about what they do. Sometimes people forget that we are human beings practicing this discipline, and we bring all our concerns for our community into this space. I’m trying to navigate a lot of complex human emotions, like how it feels to hold grief with a family when something bad happens that was preventable — which is the worst situation, because you think, “Could I have done something differently?”

Jones: I think we’ll see more diseases start coming back that we thought we had gotten rid of. I think it’s going to take dramatic changes to actually prevent those outcomes. I’m not necessarily seeing those changes being done by those in power.

I think of that quote from The Lord of the Rings. It’s something like, you don’t get to choose the time that you’re born into, but you get to choose what you’re going to do about it. And if there’s any comfort that I have, it’s in knowing that there are right decisions to make and that I’m going to make them, and I’m going to help others make them, too.

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .

“The national security might be something worth paying for,” Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said July 22 in an exclusive interview with ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ.

The U.S., which has grappled with drug shortages in recent years, relies primarily on China to produce the active ingredients in many antibiotics, according to in JAMA Health Forum. Domestic facilities have closed or shifted to producing other drugs.

“Do we want China to have that sort of leverage for these drugs to be produced principally, maybe 99%, over there, and we don’t have access to them if tension rises between the two countries?” said Cassidy, who is a physician.

On July 21, Trump said in a that he would give generic drug companies two years to move production back to the U.S., after which he would impose 100% tariffs on imported products, rising to 200% the following year. Generic drugs make up an estimated 90% of all prescriptions filled in the U.S.

Cassidy, who has served in Congress , lost his bid for reelection in May after Trump endorsed a Republican primary challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow.

Last month, more than 16 months after his vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, on CBS News’ Face the Nation that the secretary broke promises he made to the senator, including that he would not change the federal recommendations for childhood vaccines.

Asked whether he would summon Kennedy again to discuss those promises, Cassidy said he had asked for him to appear before his committee but had not heard back about whether he would do so. Kennedy in April to discuss the Trump administration’s fiscal 2027 budget request for HHS.

Cassidy told ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ that when he agreed to vote to advance Kennedy’s nomination, he trusted that Kennedy would keep his word about not disparaging vaccines.

“If they agree to guardrails and disregard those guardrails, you can judge me,” Cassidy said. “You may decide my judgment wasn’t very good, but I don’t think you can say I acted in bad faith.”

Regardless, Cassidy added, Kennedy was going to exert influence in the administration, and he thought it would be better for Kennedy to be in an official post, where his work would be subject to oversight.

“I’m pretty sure that RFK was going to have the president’s ear whether he was in office or not,” he said.

While Kennedy’s efforts to roll back federal vaccine recommendations are being blocked by courts, this week reported that the number of measles cases confirmed in the U.S. so far in 2026 has exceeded the total for 2025 — making it the highest number of cases in 35 years.

Cassidy, a principal author of the 2020 No Surprises Act targeting surprise medical bills, also said he doesn’t think Congress needs to make modifications to the law in the wake of reports that doctors and other healthcare providers are winning huge payouts under the arbitration system the law created. The No Surprises Act was intended to shield patients from receiving big bills for receiving medical care they didn’t know was outside their health plan’s network.

An analysis by this week found that providers were awarded nearly $15 billion in disputed claims in 2025, more than triple the 2024 figure of $4.08 billion.

“The initial step to make sure that people are getting their best deal is price transparency,” Cassidy said.

The HELP Committee on July 22 overwhelmingly approved advancing the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act, a bipartisan bill that would further expand the requirements that hospitals, insurers, and other healthcare providers make prices public and available to patients and employers. A House committee advanced a similar bill this week, also with bipartisan support, but it remains unclear whether either measure will be approved by the full House and Senate.

The interview — in which Cassidy also discussed his — was part of the “How Would You Fix It?” series featuring Julie Rovner, ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ’ chief Washington correspondent and host of the What the Health? podcast.

An abbreviated version of this interview aired July 23 in Episode 456 of What the Health? From ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ: “A Shrinking Safety Net.”

This article first appeared on ³Ô¹Ï²»´òìÈ and is republished here under a .