A new charter for the committee that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine use significantly refocuses the committee’s responsibilities, downplaying its role in recommending the use of new vaccines and giving it responsibility for evaluating alternatives for disease prevention.
Previous committee charters emphasized the importance of experience related to vaccine research in selecting members, but the new version posted on the CDC website on Thursday only specifies that the entire committee “represents a balanced range of scientific, clinical, and public health expertise relevant to the committee’s mission,” a broad framework that could conceivably fit even those with little experience in vaccines or vaccination policy.
Public health experts interpreted the new document as a way for Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine critic, to try to avoid a court challenge to the reconstitution of the commission, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
President Kennedy fired the previous commission en masse last June and replaced it with vaccine skeptics, people with little experience in conducting clinical trials of vaccines, evaluating trial results, or even applying vaccination recommendations, the kind of expertise that members of influential commissions traditionally had and that an earlier revision of the ACIP charter called for in its members.
After the move was challenged in court, a federal judge found in a preliminary ruling that most of the new commission’s members were unqualified to serve, leaving ACIP in limbo. Prior to this administration, the commission met three times a year: in February, June, and October. We have not yet reached the current calendar year. The government appealed this ruling.
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“If the court tells you that many of your appointments do not meet the standards of the Charter and therefore you need to set aside the results of your deliberations, then change the Charter,” Sarah Rosenbaum, professor emeritus of health law and policy at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, told STAT in an email.
“The dramatic changes to the ACIP charter underscore the Secretary’s overriding goal of superimposing his deep bias against one of the truly great achievements in child health onto the science itself,” Rosenbaum said of vaccines. “He has done this by taking over one of the most respected scientific advisory bodies in the country, changing its mission to support his favored objective of somehow proving that vaccines are dangerous, changing the qualifications of its advisers, and stocking its operations with a staff that shares his views.”
Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, agrees.
“RFK Jr. is trying to revamp the charter so that the people he brings in are…qualified. So he’s trying to make sure we don’t have the expertise to give us the best advice,” he said.
The new charter is dated May 14, and several news outlets have reported seeing copies of it in the weeks since. But it’s not clear why it was only listed now, and the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, has not responded to previous questions about why it was not listed. An earlier version of the charter, signed by President Kennedy in March, had been deemed invalid.
Richard Hughes, an attorney who filed a legal challenge to the restructured ACIP on behalf of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the new charter is intended to make the committee chosen by President Kennedy less vulnerable to legal challenges.
“The March charter was a blatant attempt to shift ACIP’s focus to align with Mr. Kennedy’s vaccine agenda (vaccine injuries, cumulative exposure, vaccine components, mRNA platforms, safety gaps) while adding non-traditional liaison groups and moving management closer to CDC leadership,” he said in an email.
“Here they are simply trying to minimize what they are doing on paper to avoid the legal implications of committee manipulation. The same structure remains: less expertise requirements, changes to the liaison structure, more control and alignment with Secretary Kennedy’s vaccine policy, and less direct recognition that the ACIP recommendations are promoting (pediatric vaccine) access and coverage,” Hughes said.
Vaccines for Children is a federal program that allows children in families without health insurance and who cannot afford vaccines to receive all recommended immunizations for free.
Former ACIP Commissioner Charlotte Moser, who was fired by President Kennedy in June 2025, expressed concern about the refocusing of the commission’s responsibilities, particularly on finding alternatives to vaccines to prevent disease.
“Rather than focusing on how to use vaccines effectively and safely, the revised document suggests that the committee should compare vaccines to ‘other preventive measures’ and advise on ‘gaps and limitations in the evidence,'” Moser said.
The lawsuit that has stalled ACIP is ongoing, with both sides submitting a status report to the presiding judge on Wednesday. Lawyers representing the government and the American Academy of Pediatrics disagree about which materials considered in the case should be confidential.
