The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Thursday that it is reinstating a federal task force focused on childhood vaccine safety, more than two decades after the panel was disbanded.
The Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines, which was dissolved in 1998, is being revived “to improve the safety, quality, and oversight of vaccines administered to American children,” HHS said in a statement.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, will serve as chairman. Other members include Susan Monarez, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr. Marty Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, according to Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson. Additional members will be announced in the future.
Dr. Howard Koh, a public health professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, emphasized the importance of childhood vaccine safety but urged caution, saying, “Everyone wants childhood vaccines to be as safe as possible. But reviving this panel now must be put in the context of recent HHS actions.”
Since taking office in February, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has faced criticism from public health experts for actions they describe as an aggressive anti-vaccine agenda. Kennedy has cut $2 billion from a program supporting vaccines for vulnerable children, downplayed the importance of measles vaccines during a record-breaking outbreak, and reduced $500 million in contracts for mRNA vaccine research.
In June, Kennedy replaced members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)—experts who advise the CDC on vaccine recommendations—with critics of COVID-19 vaccines. The new committee chair, Martin Kulldorff, said the group will form work groups to examine the childhood vaccination schedule and reevaluate vaccines not reviewed in more than seven years.
The Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines was originally created in 1986 under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which sought to compensate the small number of children who experienced adverse reactions and reduce litigation risks over vaccine injuries.
A lawsuit filed in May alleges Kennedy violated the 1986 act by failing to establish a dedicated task force. Funded by Children’s Health Defense, the group Kennedy founded, the suit praised Thursday’s announcement. Mary Holland, the group’s CEO, said, “At last the Secretary is following the law on this critical issue. We are grateful.”
The task force will collaborate with the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines, which advises the HHS secretary on implementing a national compensation program for vaccine-related injuries. HHS said the groups will provide recommendations to improve adverse reaction reporting and develop vaccines that minimize adverse effects.
Vaccine injuries are extremely rare in the United States, where systems like the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, Vaccine Safety Datalink, and V-safe monitor safety. Vaccines undergo rigorous clinical trials and independent evaluation by the FDA and CDC before approval.
Despite these safeguards, Kennedy has repeatedly criticized federal vaccine monitoring as insufficient. Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, warned that Kennedy’s frequent public criticisms of vaccines are “very dangerous” and questioned the rationale for reviving the task force.
“What’s the point now, other than he’ll use it as a bully pulpit to push his MAHA, anti-vaccine agenda? That’s the worry,” Hotez said, adding concerns about committee appointments mirroring recent changes to ACIP.
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