The ill-considered executive order President Donald Trump signed Monday would narrow the vaccines routinely recommended for children, move some vaccines from universal recommendations to “shared clinical decision-making” and direct the government to promote giving vaccines separately rather than together. This would include breaking the measles-mumps-rubella (or MMR) vaccine into three individual shots and require parents to make many more office visits to their keep children safe from preventable illnesses.
The childhood vaccine schedule recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics is evidence-based and has not changed.
As pediatricians, we believe parents deserve to understand something very clearly: The childhood vaccine schedule recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics is evidence-based and has not changed. The recommended schedule is built on decades of research, vaccine safety monitoring and experience with the diseases those vaccines prevent. All vaccines can — and should — still be given according to the AAP schedule, and these vaccines remain covered without cost-sharing under current law.
The president’s new executive order is not based on new science demonstrating that the existing schedule is unsafe or ineffective. That’s because there is no such new science. The executive order is not the result of new evidence showing that children would be healthier with fewer or more widely spaced vaccines. There is no such evidence. The executive order, then, is asking families and physicians to depart from a system that has worked extraordinarily well, and the administration is making that request without considering what happens in the real world — or considering that what it’s asking of parents is currently impossible.
Because there are decades of research showing that the combined MMR vaccine is safe and effective, separate doses of measles, mumps and rubella vaccines aren’t licensed or available in the United States. Even now, the website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledges that there is no published evidence that separating the MMR vaccine into three separate shots is safer or beneficial in any way.
There is no national paid parental leave policy that allows parents to take unlimited time off for medical appointments. Many parents cannot afford to miss work. Many children already have difficulty getting a timely appointment with a primary care physician because there simply are not enough pediatricians and primary care clinicians. This is especially true in rural areas. Parents depend on daycares and schools maintaining strong vaccine requirements so that children will get sick less often, resulting in better work attendance for adults and better school attendance for children.
The executive order’s recommendation to separate vaccines into multiple visits ignores these realities and ensures that vaccine completion rates will continue to fall across the country, putting infants and immunocompromised friends and neighbors at risk.
If it’s followed by a substantial number of people, the executive order will result in more appointments, more missed work and school, more expense, more opportunities for children to fall behind on routine immunizations and more vulnerability to preventable disease. The more complicated we make vaccination access, the more likely it becomes that some children will never complete the recommended series.
The more complicated we make vaccination access, the more likely it becomes that some children will never complete the recommended series.
After having only a handful of cases over the preceding decades, South Carolina just experienced almost 1,000 cases of measles. We saw firsthand what happens when vaccination rates decline and misinformation creates uncertainty. Many children required hospitalization due to complications of measles including pneumonia, dehydration and brain inflammation.
We have heard arguments that these changes will give parents more choice. Parents should absolutely have a voice in their children’s medical care. But choice requires accurate information. When the government changes a long-standing universal recommendation from “routinely recommended” to “shared decision-making,” it sends a powerful message that the vaccine is somehow less necessary or less well supported by science.
That is misleading.
We recently wrote about the confusing statement placed on the CDC website suggesting that it has never been proved that vaccines do not cause autism. Such statements create doubt where the scientific evidence is consistent: Vaccines do not cause autism.
Pediatricians welcome questions and concerns from parents. Many of us are parents ourselves, and we spend years training to help families understand what children need to grow, develop and thrive.
We have an obligation to tell parents what we know.
We know vaccines work.
We know they are carefully studied and continuously monitored for safety.
We know the diseases they prevent can be devastating and sometimes fatal.
And we know what it is like to sit beside a very sick child with a vaccine-preventable illness. It is heartbreaking.
We vaccinate our own children and grandchildren. We would never recommend something for your children that we would not do for our own.
We are still here to answer questions, listen to concerns and have honest conversations. Those conversations should be grounded in science and a shared concern for your child’s well-being, not fear, disinformation or politics.
Children deserve nothing less.
The post We’re pediatricians who vaccinated our children and grandchildren. Trust us over Trump. appeared first on MS NOW.
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