What a time to be a new parent. Tradition holds that everyone seems to have opinions about your new baby, from feeding to sleep schedules. But sharing thoughts on vaccines has become confusing, affecting critical health decisions due to spreading doubts regarding the universal hepatitis B vaccination of newborns.
A recent poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found 63 % of Americans are extremely or very confident childhood vaccines are highly effective at preventing serious illness. However, the poll also shows sharp splits between Democrats and Republicans and between older and younger adults, with younger people becoming more skeptical.
This shift in opinion is due to uncertainty over the value of childhood vaccines sown by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC recently changed the guidelines on childhood vaccines, formally adopting what it calls “individual-based decision-making (by parents) for hepatitis B immunization” of newborns and infants born to women tested negative for the virus.
This “risk-based approach” puts the onus on parents and represents a departure from long-standing hepatitis B guidelines for vaccinating babies at birth or soon thereafter, a practice that helped reduce a disease that can lead to liver cancer in children.
This new sense of confusion mirrors what pediatricians are now experiencing in hospitals.
Dr. David Hill is a North Carolina pediatrician, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and editor of its publication: Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age 5. He questions the CDC policy change.
“I used to see it as a fairly rare occurrence that somebody would say they don’t want the hepatitis B vaccine, and we are already seeing an increase in this conversation,” said Hill.
Parents’ concerns remain critical, he said, but so is examining the newborn and beginning anticipatory guidance to ensure babies can thrive as they grow up.
Hill and the thousands of frontline pediatrician members of the pediatrics academy are deeply concerned about the CDC’s decision to ignore decades of scientific evidence supporting preventive measures against hepatitis B.
“We’re now just collectively holding our breaths and waiting for liver cancer to come back,” Hill said. “And it will take a minute, but we know the math on this, and the math is inexorable.”
There may be a silver lining amid the current confusion. Hill and other doctors say parents continue to place a high degree of trust in their physicians; that listening to a child’s doctor is the soundest decision of all.
“The most impactful thing is that the doctor will see this child through childhood,” Hill said. “They have an investment in a child’s well-being.”
The federal government is seen as unhelpful to that dynamic. The Health and Human Services Department recently cut millions in grants to the pediatrics academy in response to its perceived criticism of HHS Secretary Kennedy.
That just made matters messier at a time parents need scientific facts.
For specifics on evidence-based vaccine information, Hill recommends the American Academy of Pediatrics website (aap.org) and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Vaccine Education Center (chop.edu/vaccine-education-center).
Megan Giles Cooney is a columnist for the Traverse City (MI) Record-Eagle. Reach her atmegangilescooney@gmail.com
