Trump admin drops childhood vaccination reporting requirement
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States will no longer be required to report how many children and pregnant women covered by Medicaid are immunized, the Trump administration wrote in a letter to state officials.
Why it matters: The move could significantly decrease visibility into nationwide vaccination rates, since Medicaid and the related Children's Health Insurance Program cover almost half of U.S. kids and 41% of births.
State of play: Federal Medicaid administrators starting this year will retire four quality measures on pediatric and prenatal vaccination status of enrollees.
- States can still voluntarily report vaccination levels to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services so the agency can "maintain a longitudinal dataset while exploring alternative immunization measures," the administration wrote in a Dec. 30 letter to state officials.
Between the lines: States have only been required to report a core set of quality measures for kids enrolled in Medicaid — including vaccination status — since 2024.
- Federal Medicaid payments to the states aren't tied to the vaccination reporting measures.
Zoom in: CMS says the Health and Human Services secretary has the discretion to change the reporting requirements.
- Childhood vaccination rates are dropping in many parts of the U.S. Some 5.2 million kindergarten-age children live in counties where vaccination rates are below herd immunity, according to data analyzed by the Washington Post.
- Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering changes to the federal childhood vaccine schedule and overhauling a legal system for vaccine injuries that could expose manufacturers to new lawsuits and possibly drive them from the market.
What's next: CMS this year will start looking into options for new vaccine measures that capture whether parents and families were informed about "vaccine choices, vaccine safety and side effects, and alternative vaccine schedules," the letter says.
- CMS also plans to explore how to account for religious exemptions in the measures.
What they're saying: Immunization reporting is critical for assessing whether children are getting needed health care and how taxpayer funds are being spent, said Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.
- "It may seem like technical change, but this is a big deal," Alker told Axios.
- "This is really opening the door for the secretary's anti-vaccine allies to push at the state level to undermine the current vaccination schedule."
