On Feb. 24, R.I. Attorney General Peter Neronha P’19 P’22 joined a coalition lawsuit challenging the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision to change childhood immunization recommendations.
The lawsuit came in wake of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Jan. 5 decision memo — which removed seven childhood vaccines from their universally recommended status — and was filed by 14 attorney generals and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
“You don’t need to be a scientist to understand the science,” Neronha said in a press release emailed to The Herald. “For decades vaccinations have prevented hundreds of millions of cases of illness in this country and have saved Americans trillions of dollars in related expenses.”
The plaintiffs argue that the reclassification of consensus vaccines will lead to lower vaccination rates, increases in vaccine-preventable illnesses and increased healthcare costs, among others.
The lawsuit names the HHS, the CDC, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CDC Acting Director Jay Bhattacharya as defendants.
“This is a publicity stunt dressed up as a lawsuit,” Emily Hilliard, press secretary for the HHS, wrote in an email to The Herald. “The CDC immunization schedule reforms reflect common-sense public health policy shared by peer, developed countries.”
The CDC reclassified childhood immunizations into three categories: recommended for all, recommended for high-risk populations and recommended to be administered with shared clinical decision making.
Certain vaccines, including those for influenza, COVID-19, hepatitis A and hepatitis B, were moved from the recommended for all to the shared clinical decision making category. The memo alleged that there is not a “broad-based consensus” for these immunizations.
The plaintiffs also called the replacement of the majority of Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice members last June “arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law.”
“By law, the health secretary has clear authority to make determinations on the CDC immunization schedule and the composition of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices,” Hilliard wrote.
Robert Griffith, a clinical associate professor of pediatrics at the Warren Alpert Medical School who has been working as a pediatrician for 43 years, said that administering vaccinations is at least half of his day-to-day responsibilities.
“These recommendations are going to cause children to die,” Griffith told The Herald.
According to a 2024 CDC report, routine childhood vaccinations administered to children born from 1994 to 2023 have prevented “approximately 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and 1,129,000 deaths, resulting in direct savings of $540 billion and societal savings of $2.7 trillion.”
There are diseases that have been largely contained for decades, but this is only “until the vaccine coverage rate goes down,” Griffith said. He called the lawsuit “an excellent idea.”
The memo cites President Trump’s direction to review the vaccine recommendations of peer countries — including Denmark, the first “peer nation” to remove the COVID-19 vaccine from its universal recommended status for children — and adjust U.S. recommendations to match.
The plaintiffs argued that Denmark and their vaccine recommendations are not comparable to the United States because it has a “small, homogenous population and universal health care.”
“Even Danish health officials are baffled by Defendants’ reliance on Denmark,” the lawsuit reads.
The Rhode Island Department of Health’s advisories can choose to disagree with federal policies. Per state law, RIDOH has the sole authority in making vaccine recommendations for Rhode Islanders, The Herald previously reported.
The Jan. 5 decision memo will “not affect vaccine access or insurance coverage in Rhode Island,” Joseph Wendelken, the public information officer for RIDOH, wrote in an email to The Herald.
RIDOH’s childhood vaccination recommendations continue to align with the American Academy of Pediatrics’s recommended schedule. R.I. school immunization requirements will also remain unchanged, Wendelken added.
“The science and data are clear — vaccines save lives,” Wendelken wrote.
Kelly Ding is a senior staff writer for the community and culture beat. She is from College Station, TX and plans to concentrate in IAPA on the policy and governance track. In her free time, she loves to explore new coffee shops, curl up with a good book, and be a gym rat.
