Talking vaccines with patients while ACIP hits pause

Vaccine policy in the United States is in flux, and chances are, your patients are reading about it before they see you.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) vaccine advisory committee, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), scrapped a Feb. 25-27, 2026, meeting that had been on the calendar and is now scheduled to meet March 18-19, according to federal postings and Reuters.

The cancellation followed a year of aggressive changes under Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who dismissed all 17 ACIP voting members in 2025 and pushed through a revised childhood schedule that did not go through the usual committee vote.

Revised childhood vaccine schedule

On Jan. 5, HHS announced that the federal child and adolescent schedule will now recommend routine vaccination against 11 diseases, down from 17. Vaccines for COVID-19, rotavirus, influenza, meningococcal disease, hepatitis A and hepatitis B were moved out of the “routine for all children” column into high-risk or shared clinical decision-making categories.

The backlash was immediate. Several national medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), have filed suit in federal court in Massachusetts, arguing that narrowing the schedule is unlawful and “egregious, reckless and dangerous.”

On Feb. 24, Democratic attorneys general from 14 states, joined by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, announced a multistate lawsuit targeting both the schedule changes and Kennedy’s ACIP overhaul.

AAP has formally broken with the new federal guidance. Its 2026 child and adolescent schedule continues to recommend vaccines that protect against 18 diseases and explicitly maintains routine use of vaccines that the CDC has downgraded.

Analysis from KFF finds that many states are also diverging, relying on prior CDC schedules or AAP guidance rather than the pared-back federal list.

• Related content: “28 states reject the CDC’s new childhood vaccine schedule, KFF finds”

Measles

All of this is unfolding against a measles resurgence. South Carolina is facing the worst U.S. measles outbreak since the 1990s, with 979 cases as of Feb. 24. Most of the infections are in unvaccinated children, and smaller outbreaks are being reported in other states.

Now a year into Kennedy’s tenure as HHS secretary, parents and adult patients are walking into exam rooms with headlines about canceled meetings, dropped vaccines and lawsuits against the nation’s top health officials.

This slideshow is focused on what you can control right now: how you explain the turmoil, how you talk through “shared decision-making” and how you steady expectations on coverage and risk.