On Jan. 5, 2026, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decreased the number of vaccines recommended for children from 17 to 11. In December 2025, President Donald Trump ordered the review of the childhood immunization schedule by federal health officials. This move has long been supported by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This new protocol has now split up vaccines into three different categories, starting with vaccines for all children, vaccines for high-risk groups and vaccines based on shared clinical decision-making.
Many common vaccines have been moved to the “shared clinical decision making” category, meaning they are no longer mandated for all children, and the decision to receive the vaccine is up to the patients and their clinic. Some of these include seasonal flu, COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), meningococcal, hepatitis A and hepatitis B vaccines.
According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, the goal of this change was to align the U.S. vaccine schedule with those of other nations, such as Denmark. This reasoning is flawed, critics say, because of vast differences of population sizes and healthcare infrastructure between the two countries. According to The New York Times, pediatricians, epidemiologists and public health experts have expressed that Denmark is not a good model for the United States and will lead to more cases of preventable diseases.
School Nurse and Campus Healthcare Provider Myra Mercado voiced concerns about this policy change, which are also shared by many parents.
“You’re not going to change your thermostat based on the temperature of another country,” Mercado said, referencing a quote from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
According to NPR, decisions to change the vaccine schedule were confirmed without formal or public input from vaccine makers. Additionally, senior Health and Human Services (HHS) officials cited a drop in vaccinations for children, displaying a decline in public trust in the vaccine schedule.
The Yale School of Public Health reported that the vaccines recently removed under this new schedule had previously contriubted to the prevention of 6 million cases of hepatitis B, 4 million cases of hepatitus A and 30 million cases of rotavirus.
While this mandate included changes to the vaccine schedule, all of these vaccinations will still be covered by insurance, including Medicaid, Vaccines for Children and Children’s Health Insurance Program. This means that children’s vaccinations should still be easily accessible to those who want them. Although the mandate changes guidelines, many children’s vaccines are still being recommended by the CDC such as tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, rubella and HPV.
The California Department of Health, schools and hospitals across the U.S. have switched to following the guidelines recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Their studies are what influenced the original 17 vaccines to be mandated by the CDC, and they still recommend all 17 vaccines to be a part of citizens’ vaccine schedules. The AAP counters the CDC’s changes by saying that the healthcare system that works for one country will not always work for every country.
“Let’s base it on science, let’s base it on evidence that makes sense for our population,” Mercado said.
