Bagdasarian

The federal government is recommending fewer childhood vaccinations, but the state of Michigan is saying no way.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday recommended that the previous number of childhood vaccines of 17 be reduced to just 11 vaccinations.

In a statement issued Tuesday, Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Michigan’s chief medical executive, said that the new changes may create confusion for families and clinicians in terms of school vaccine requirements, clinical workflows and the supply and use of combination vaccines.

“(The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services) will continue to provide clear guidance, backed by science, to help protect Michigan families,” Bagdasarian said.

The new schedule is specifically suggesting tighter restrictions on vaccines for rotavirus, hepatitis A and B, meningitis and seasonal influenza, recommending that those vaccines only be given to children with high medical risk or at the recommendation of a pediatrician or health care provider.

NPR reported that those vaccines now exist in a category designated as “shared-decision making.”

The move follows U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s missives on the federal government reevaluating the number of vaccines given to children and their effectiveness, which follow his long history of questioning vaccines and their disproven ties to autism and unsubstantiated connections to other disorders.

Schedule changes issued Monday by Jim O’Neil, the deputy secretary in Kennedy’s agency, were the product of consultation with National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, Food and Drug Commissioner. Marty Makary, and U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, as well as the health ministries of what the agency described as peer nations.

Recommended for all children are vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, polio, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), pneumococcal disease, human papillomavirus (HPV), and varicella (chickenpox).

In response, Bagdasarian said that the underlying scientific evidence surrounding vaccine effectiveness remains unchanged, and that the state will continue to follow guidance produced either by the American Academy of Pediatrics or the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Bagdasarian in December issued a standing recommendation to follow that guidance despite whatever changes the federal government made regarding the vaccine schedule, and she stands by the recommendation.

Both the state’s health department and the federal health agency have said that all vaccines, including those moved to shared clinical decision-making category, will remain covered with no out-of-pocket cost via Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act-regulated private insurance plans and federal coverage programs such as Medicaid and the Vaccines for Children program.

U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Birmingham), who has become one of Kennedy’s foremost critics in Congress, said in a statement that the agency’s move was part of why she has called for his impeachment.

“RFK Jr. is ignoring decades of reliable science and making our children less safe — this is the latest step,” Stevens said. “The Secretary of Health and Human Services is supposed to protect the health of the American people. Instead, at every turn, RFK Jr. actively chooses to make our country sicker.”

Stevens added that Kennedy’s “conspiracy agenda is dangerous and unacceptable.”

“He must be impeached,” Stevens said.