Heinrich, Colleagues Introduce Bill to Protect Scientific Standards & Safeguard ACIP Vaccine Committee

Senators introduce bill ahead of ACIP’s meeting tomorrow to revisit hepatitis B, other childhood shots

This year, HHS Secretary replaced all 17 non-partisan experts on CDC’s top vaccine committee, attacked settled science

WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) joined 8 Senate Democrats to introduce the Family Vaccine Protection Act, legislation to protect Americans’ access to vaccines and to safeguard proven science from recent Trump Administration efforts to undermine vaccines. The bill comes as the CDC’s top vaccine panel meets tomorrow to discuss – and potentially vote on – updates to the childhood vaccine schedule, including the hepatitis B vaccine.

The Family Vaccine Protection Act codifies the structure and practices of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), a 60-year-old federal panel at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention that recommends who should get vaccines and when. It strengthens transparency into how vaccine guidance is developed and adopted, reinforces science-based decision-making, and ensures accountability in the nation’s vaccine process.

ACIP’s recommendations inform which vaccines are covered by insurers and government programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Vaccines for Children, which provides free vaccines to more than half of the children in the U.S.

The senators’ legislation comes after Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Jr. undermined the ACIP and replaced all 17 non-partisan scientific experts with ideologues who have a history of undermining vaccines. Two weeks after Secretary Kennedy replaced all of the committee’s members, the new ACIP announced plans to revisit the childhood vaccine schedule, putting access to vaccines that children have received for decades, such as hepatitis B and polio, in danger. The new ACIP also invited a known vaccine denier and conspiracy theorist to speak on vaccines, and then made recommendations based solely on her pseudoscience-filled presentation.

This attack on settled vaccine science comes as the U.S. faces the highest total number of measles cases in 33 years, including the first measles deaths in the country in a decade.

Specifically, the Family Vaccine Protection Act will:

• Establish guardrails to ensure vaccines remain accessible to all:
  • Protect the role of ACIP recommendations in programs like the Vaccine for Children Program and ensure that health insurance plans provide cost-free coverage for vaccines recommended by ACIP.
• Codify current rigorous, science-based processes for recommending vaccines:
  • Set a timeline for new vaccine consideration by ACIP
  • Require that both the CDC Director and HHS Secretary adopt such recommendations if supported by a majority of the scientific evidence.

• Strengthen the independence of the Advisory Committee:
  • Write the role of ACIP into statute and specify its structure, its membership selection processes, meeting frequency, and expertise requirements to protect it from dissolution or undue interference by the HHS secretary.

• Ensure the Secretary cannot unilaterally make or withdraw vaccine recommendations contrary to the advice of scientific experts:
  • Require the HHS secretary to adopt the official vaccine decision as set by ACIP
  • Require the secretary to publish the basis for the agency action, including an explanation as to how the action is supported by the best available, peer-reviewed scientific evidence, if the secretary chooses to depart from an ACIP recommendation.

The Family Vaccine Protection Act is led by U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.). Alongside Heinrich, the legislation is cosponsored by U.S. Senators Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). U.S. Representatives Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Kim Schrier (D-Wash.) introduced companion legislation in the House. 

The bill is endorsed by the American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians, The American Public Health Association and The Infectious Disease Society of America. 

###