Reinstatement of Medical Experts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Doctors for America PO Box: 21161 2300 18th St NW Lbby Washington, DC 20009-9996 August 5, 2025 Doctors for America Calls for the Reinstatement of Medical Experts and Professional Medical Organizations to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) WASHINGTON, D.C. – Doctors for America is deeply alarmed by the CDC’s decision to remove professional medical societies from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). We stand with the medical societies who have spoken out against this move, and we echo their statement that barring their critical expertise and real-world clinical experience from vaccine guideline development is irresponsible and dangerous. Excluding experts – including the former 17 sitting members of ACIP – from the vaccine recommendation process does not depoliticize it–it politicizes it further by sidelining clinical voices in favor of opaque, bureaucratic decisions. Professional medical societies – including the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Family Physicians, and Infectious Diseases Society of America–have served a vital role in shaping our nation’s vaccine recommendations through collaborative, evidence-based engagement. As professional societies comprised of physicians and medical experts, these groups share and amplify the common goal of their members of keeping patients healthy and protecting public health. While these groups have never held voting privileges, their expertise has been instrumental in ensuring the vaccine guidance reflects the lived realities of clinicians caring for diverse populations across their lifespan. This process has allowed for harmonized vaccine recommendations which are critical, not just for clinical consistency, but for building public trust through a transparent, evidence-driven process. The consequences of this decision go beyond the CDC’s internal procedures. ACIP recommendations directly inform which vaccines must be covered by insurers and made available to all children – regardless of whether their families can afford them – through the Vaccines for Children Program. This decision comes at a time when multiple pillars of preventive health infrastructure are being dismantled, such as the weakening of the U.S. Preventive ServicesTask Force (USPSTF) and the proposed changes to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, that seem more aligned with profiteering than public interest. Taken together, these efforts paint a troubling picture: an orchestrated strategy to undermine the very systems that ensure access to evidence-based, preventive care and repurpose them to promote anti-vaccine and unscientific agendas. This is not a coincidence. It is an attack on science-backed health care, cloaked in language about “bias” and “special interests,” even as politically motivated actors continue to profit from public doubt. Barring the very experts who have, for decades, ensured that our nation’s vaccine program is scientifically-grounded, safe, effective, and unbiased, will only further sow public distrust in vaccines and ultimately lead to unnecessary illnesses and deaths from preventable diseases. Characterizing these very same medical organizations as “biased” and “taint[ing] vaccine recommendations” is an affront to all the organizations’ physicians members who have dedicated their lives to protecting the health of their patients and the country. This move further illustrates RFK Jr.’s pattern of using his position as HHS Secretary to undermine public trust, dismantle public health infrastructure, promote the anti-vaccine agenda, and erase access to vaccines. Secretary Kennedy is unfit to lead HHS and must resign. Doctors for America calls on the CDC to reverse this decision and reinstate medical societies as active participants in ACIP workgroups. Failure to do so will demonstrate that the ACIP now serves the anti-vaccine agenda and DOES NOT aim to promote and protect the lives of all Americans. Now more than ever, we must center medical expertise, collaboration, and transparency in our public health decision-making. The health of our nation depends on it. ### About Doctors for America: