Newly appointed ACIP votes against combined MMRV vaccine for children under four
Why it matters
The first concrete schedule change from Kennedy’s reconstituted advisory committee, evidence that the personnel changes at CDC are already reshaping what shots children are recommended to receive.
In September 2025, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), newly appointed by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., voted 8–3 to recommend against using the combined MMRV vaccine for children under age 4, advising instead that they receive separate MMR and varicella shots.
The committee initially voted to keep MMRV covered under the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program, then reversed that decision on September 19, 2025, meaning the combined vaccine is no longer recommended or covered by VFC for that age group. A vote on changing the hepatitis B birth-dose schedule was indefinitely postponed.
Each ACIP action is logged here as the administration keeps shifting its posture on the schedule.
Source
CDC, ACIPRelated coverage
New McCullough Foundation study: COVID-vaccinated children show higher odds of autism and ADHD in federal survey data
This is the McCullough Foundation’s newest paper, posted today, and it uses the federal government’s own National Health Interview Survey rather than a private dataset. That makes it easy for anyone, including HHS, to check. It is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed yet.
NIH finalizes its $51 million autism research initiative: 13 projects, none on vaccines
The administration promised a hard look at what causes autism. The money is now committed, and it is worth being precise about where it went: the largest federal award pool of the year funds thirteen projects, and not one of them studies vaccines. The vaccine question sits with a separate, much smaller contract that has yet to report anything.
Post“Kennedy is the saving grace”: Trump moves to remake the childhood schedule, and what is actually in force
In the span of six weeks the President signed an order cutting routine childhood vaccines from 18 diseases to 11, then stood beside Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and proposed splitting shots into five smaller doses. A viral clip called it a schedule of 72 shots reduced to 11 “by the stroke of a pen.” That is the biggest shift in federal vaccine posture in a generation, and it is also not yet law. Here is the record, and the reaction, side by side.