Richard H. Hughes, IV, and William Walters, attorneys, and Anna Larson, Advisor, in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, co-authored an article in Health Affairs, titled “The Obituary of the US Childhood Immunization Schedule.”
Following is an excerpt:
On January 5, 2026, the U.S. childhood immunization schedule, along with pediatric infectious disease preventive care as we know it, ended. In an unprecedented move, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) held an embargoed press conference. HHS announced a revised Childhood and Adolescent Immunization Schedule that fundamentally restructures recommendations and raises significant concerns for vaccine access and child health.
Immunization schedules were previously developed only by professional societies and weren’t standardized across groups until the 1960s. Before the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was established, there were several other groups that regularly made recommendations on immunization practices, including: the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board (AFEB), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the American Public Health Association (APHA). Each group issued recommendations to their specific audiences (e.g. military, pediatrics, etc.), but there was no centralized group forming opinions for public health and providing regular, up-to-date reviews of the need for immunization across populations.
In the 1950s and 1960s new vaccines were developed and two key federal financial programs were established, the Poliomyelitis Vaccination Assistance Act in 1955 and the Vaccination Assistance Act in 1962). The US Surgeon General and the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledged a need for a formal mechanism to guide national immunization policy and established the ACIP in spring 1964. It is the ACIP that provides recommendations, which then must be adopted by the CDC Director to become effective, to maintain and update this schedule for children and adults.
