Federal cuts may hit Pennsylvania childhood vaccine funding
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Planned federal rollbacks on pandemic-era health funding would cut nearly $99 million for childhood immunizations and vaccines in Pennsylvania, per federal government data.
Why it matters: The money helps provide free or low-cost vaccines for children to fight preventable and sometimes deadly diseases like COVID-19 and measles, mumps and rubella as the U.S. faces one of its largest measles outbreaks in decades and vaccination rates among children in the state decline.
By the numbers: The grant cuts would include $98.6 million of $246 million primarily awarded to the state Department of Health.
The big picture: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to claw back about $11.4 billion from states nationwide for COVID-19 testing, vaccination and initiatives to bridge health disparities.
- That includes $2 billion in childhood immunization and vaccination funding.
- Congress allocated the funds during the pandemic.
Yes, but: A federal judge temporarily blocked the cuts last week after two dozen states, including Pennsylvania, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
- Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said the cuts would cancel more than half a billion dollars in public health grants that support work to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and provide mental health and substance abuse services.
Between the lines: Cutting vaccine funding in Pennsylvania could lower vaccination rates for people most at risk and make disease outbreaks more likely across the state.
Case in point: State data from the 2023–24 school year shows that in many counties, the vaccination rate for measles in young children is slipping below the 95% threshold needed to stop the virus from spreading.
What they're saying: "The COVID pandemic led to lower rates for all vaccines," Kristen Rodack, executive deputy secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, wrote in the lawsuit. "Now we are seeing rising outbreaks of previously controlled vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles."
- "Loss of this funding will be a substantial decrease in vaccine administration disproportionately affecting uninsured and underinsured people primarily in our most populous areas," she said.
- "Cuts to funding for childhood vaccines could reduce availability of vaccines for uninsured or underinsured children, many of whom rely on the Vaccines for Children program," said Kristen Mertz, medical epidemiologist for clinical services with the Allegheny County Health Department. "More unvaccinated children will mean more disease outbreaks, hospitalizations and deaths."
- Yvonne Maldonado, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases and epidemiology at Stanford, tells Axios vaccines have been so effective it's easy to forget many of these long-forgotten diseases still exist. "They're not diseases we should be seeing in the U.S.," she says. "Vaccines are safe and effective."
The other side: The Trump administration says the broader overhaul of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services aims to save taxpayers money.
- "The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago," HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a late-March statement.
What's next: "As a result of taking the Administration to court, these dollars will now start flowing again" as litigation plays out, Shapiro said on X.