Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., joined by President Donald Trump, delivers an announcement on “significant medical and scientific findings for America’s children” in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Sept. 22, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Federal health officials suggested a link between the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy as a risk for autism, although many health agencies have noted inconclusive results in the research. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans disapprove of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s job performance and the federal government’s evolving vaccine policy, according to a poll released Thursday by the nonpartisan health organization KFF.

In addition, the vast majority of those surveyed have heard the unproven claims made by President Donald Trump, Kennedy and others in late September that taking acetaminophen, also known as Tylenol, during pregnancy could be one possible environmental factor in a child later being diagnosed with autism.

A total of 77% of the people KFF polled said they knew of the statements, though whether people believe the claims, which have yet to be established by the medical community, varied.

Only 4% of those surveyed said it is “definitely true” that taking Tylenol during pregnancy increases the risk of the child developing autism, and 35% said the claim is “definitely false.” Thirty percent said it is “probably true” and 30% said it is “probably false.”

Combined, 65% said it’s either probably or definitely false to say that taking acetaminophen during pregnancy increases the chance of a child developing autism, a complex disorder that experts believe is the result of both genetic and environmental factors.

When broken down by political party, 86% of Democrats, 67% of independents and 43% of Republicans said the claims were either probably or definitely false.

The survey shows 59% somewhat or strongly disapprove of how Kennedy is handling his new role at the top of the country’s public health infrastructure.

The level of support changes considerably depending on political party affiliation, with 86% of Democrats, 64% of independents and 26% of Republicans disapproving.

A slightly higher number, 62%, either somewhat or strongly disapprove of the United States’ vaccine policy.A similar trend emerged when those polled were broken up by political parties. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats, 67% of independents and 31% of Republicans somewhat or strongly disapproved of vaccine policy.

The survey shows a declining share of Americans have faith in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide trusted information about vaccines, compared with previous KFF polls in September 2023 and earlier this year.

A total of 63% of respondents two years ago trusted the CDC on vaccines, but that has declined to 50%.

Democrats’ faith in the CDC’s vaccine recommendations has dropped from 88% two years ago to 64%, independents have gone from 61% to 47% and Republicans have remained relatively steady, only going from 40% to 39%.

Across political parties, a person’s own doctor as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association remain broadly trusted for vaccine information.Eighty-three percent said they trust their doctor or health care provider, 69% believed information from the American Academy of Pediatrics and 64% had faith in the AMA.

The poll of 1,334 adults took place from Sept. 23 to Sept. 29 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full survey. Questions broken down by a person’s political ideology had a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percentage points.

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Retsef Levi, a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, signaled that the committee could revisit other vaccine recommendations in future meetings. Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder

This story was updated at 10:45 a.m. on Sept. 22.

ATLANTA —  A key vaccine advisory panel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has indefinitely postponed a controversial change to guidelines on administering hepatitis B vaccines to newborn babies, and altered long-standing recommendations around COVID-19 vaccine access for children and adults, though a proposal to require prescriptions for all individuals seeking the shot narrowly failed. 

The panel also voted to reverse a decision they made only Thursday that would have prevented updated guidelines on the MMRV vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps, rubella and varicella, from applying to children enrolled in the Vaccines for Children program. 

Vaccines for Children is a federal program which covers the cost of vaccines for more than half of American children. The decision to implement different standards for children enrolled in VFC caused confusion among top health officials as well as some committee members when it was introduced Thursday. 

Jason Goldman, the president of the American College of Physicians who also serves as a liaison to the committee, criticized Thursday’s vote, arguing that the changes were not backed by scientific evidence. 

“Would you consider that the second vote actually revealed the truth, that you do not have the data or evidence to challenge the current standing and that there is no associated harm?” Goldman asked the committee.

The committee’s reversal on Friday standardizes the updated MMRV vaccine recommendations for all children. If ACIP’s recommendations are approved by CDC officials, doctors will be advised to administer separate MMR and varicella vaccines for all children under 4 years of age.

ACIP tables a rule delaying Hepatitis B vaccine for newborns

In what appeared to be another reversal, the panel shelved a resolution that sought to alter current CDC recommendations around hepatitis B vaccines for newborn children. 

The current three-dose series for hepatitis B, an incurable viral infection that attacks the liver, includes one vaccine administered to infants within 24 hours of birth, and subsequent booster shots given a month and six months after the initial dose. ACIP has been recommending a hepatitis B vaccine for all newborn babies since 1991, which resulted in a 99% drop in serious infections between 1990 and 2019.

If ACIP members choose to implement the changes at a later meeting, official CDC guidelines will recommend that pediatricians delay administering the first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine until 30 days after birth for all children whose mothers test negative for the disease.

The panel did not provide any evidence indicating that delaying the vaccine improved children’s health, or that there were any widespread or serious instances of harm caused by administering hepatitis B vaccines to newborns. However, some ACIP members also cast doubt on the accuracy of data showing the shot is safe.

“I think that there are gaps in what we know and understand about the effects of hepatitis B, particularly on very young infants,” said Vicky Pebsworth, a committee member who is a registered nurse and who sits on the board of the National Vaccine Information Center, which advocates for vaccine exemptions. “I think that the conclusion that we know that it is safe is, perhaps, premature.” 

Dr. Adam Langer, who serves as the principal deputy director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention, urged the panel to reconsider narrowing the recommendations.

“One of the primary reasons for recommending universal birth dose in the U.S. is to serve as a safety net for infants born to mothers with unknown test results,” Langer said during his presentation to the committee on Thursday. 

“To date, no country in the world has reverted from universal to selective birth dose recommendations,” he added.

The meeting, which was held at the CDC’s Chamblee campus, also inspired a demonstration organized by a group of former CDC workers, who dressed up as preventable diseases and waved signs to the passing cars while the meeting was underway. 

Cindy Weinbaum, who spent about a decade of her career at the CDC in the division of viral hepatitis, said she commended the committee for deciding to table a vote that would have changed the recommendations for hepatitis B vaccinations.

“I think it’s really commendable, actually, that they delayed this vote because they do not know the implications of not recommending a birth dose of hepatitis B,” Weinbaum said.

“So that was a nod to their lack of understanding of vaccine programs, vaccine science and the importance of certain vaccinations for kids,” she added.

Weinbaum said the proposal’s appearance on the committee’s agenda reflects the “vaccine nihilism that the current administration is supporting.” She said the shot given to newborns within the first day of their life has found itself in the “cross hairs of the anti-vax movement.”

“It’s because here’s this newborn baby and you’re very vulnerable, and sticking it with a needle is kind of a scary thing,” she said. “They just don’t understand that it’s even more scary to get liver cancer, and that’s really what we want to prevent.”

ACIP moves to center vaccine harm

Though the committee did not implement some of its more controversial proposals, ACIP’s new members have signaled that they would like to place a greater focus on examples of vaccine harm and adverse outcomes in future policy proposals.

They have also rejected widely embraced data on vaccine safety, choosing instead to focus on isolated cases and dubious studies, including one paper claiming that rats exposed to the COVID-19 vaccine exhibited “autism-like behaviors” that was eventually retracted by the journal that published it.

Some ACIP members, including Robert Malone, also pushed back against guidelines that advise vaccinating young children and pregnant women, arguing that there is a lack of data proving definitively that vaccines are safe. 

“The default should be the assumption that there is no intervention in the infant and the pregnant woman with the vaccine unless there is definitive evidence of safety,” Malone said.

But Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics and medicine at Dartmouth College who has served as a past committee member, pushed back against the argument that any medical intervention should be entirely risk-free.

“I just want to point out that it’s very, very difficult to prove the absence of harm, it’s simply not a practical objective,” Meissner said.

“I think it’s important for everyone to understand that no vaccine is 100% safe and no vaccine is 100% effective,” he added. “What’s important for the provider before administering a vaccine is to think about that particular patient and does the benefit of protection exceed any possible side effect from the vaccine.” 

But in a conversation with reporters after the meeting, Retsef Levi, an ACIP member and professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, signaled that the committee could revisit other vaccine recommendations in future meetings.

“I think we need to review vaccines, in general, from time to time,” Levi said. “It’s part of a good process. I don’t think that I need now to single out one vaccine or another. I think that, in general, it’s actually in the mission of ACIP. . . to actually review every vaccine.”

Georgia Recorder editor-in-chief Jill Nolin contributed to this report.

Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized ACIP’s 1991 recommendation for the first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. The 1991 recommendation was for all newborn babies to receive the shot, but not specifically within the first day of being born.

Former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Susan Monarez testifies before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Sept.17, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez testified before a U.S. Senate committee Wednesday that she was fired after just 29 days because she refused to pre-approve vaccine recommendations or fire career officials for no reason. 

Monarez, who was nominated by President Donald Trump earlier this year and confirmed by the Senate in July on a party-line vote, became a central figure in the country’s debate over public health last month after she refused to resign. 

Monarez testified that during a meeting in late August, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told her she needed to commit to approving upcoming recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without reviewing any data or research. 

“He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause. He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign,” Monarez said. “I responded that I could not pre-approve recommendations without reviewing the evidence and I had no basis to fire scientific experts.”

Monarez testified before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee during the nearly three-hour hearing that she told Kennedy if he didn’t trust her, then he could fire her.

During that same late August meeting, Monarez said Kennedy told her the childhood vaccine schedule would be changing in September and that she needed to be on board with that.

“We got into an exchange where I had suggested that I would be open to changing childhood vaccine schedules if the evidence or science was supportive,” Monarez testified. “And he responded that there was no science or evidence associated with the childhood vaccine schedule.”

ACIP is scheduled to meet Thursday and Friday at the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Kennedy testified before a separate Senate committee earlier this month that he did demand that Monarez fire career CDC scientists but said he didn’t tell her to accept the recommendations of the vaccine advisory panel without further review.

“What I asked her about is she had made a statement that she was going to not sign on and I wanted clarification about that,” Kennedy said at the time. “I told her I didn’t want her to have a role if she’s not going to sign onto it.”

Vaccine safety at issue

Monarez said that undermining vaccine safety will lead to an increase in preventable diseases, some of which have long-term or even lifelong consequences for children’s health. 

“I believe that we will have our children harmed for things that we know they do not need to be harmed by — polio, measles, diphtheria, chickenpox,” she said. 

Former CDC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Debra Houry told the committee there are significant ramifications if the new members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, who were appointed by Kennedy after he fired all of the former members, don’t use rigorous science and data to make their recommendations. 

“It’s going to be heartbreaking,” Houry said. “I think what concerns me is these aren’t harmless diseases. We just saw the case in California of a young child that died of encephalitis years after measles. These diseases have long-term consequences and in the U.S. we have gone so far in reversing this. We don’t want our children to die.”  

Houry was one of several CDC officials who resigned after learning about Monarez’s firing, which happened just weeks after a gunman opened fire at the CDC’s headquarters, killing a police officer. 

Both Monarez and Houry testified, in response to a question from Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, that confusion about vaccines and CDC recommendations had real consequences. 

“I myself was subject to threats,” Monarez said. “And I am very concerned that the further promulgation of misleading information will undermine not just the safety and health of our children, but it will also exacerbate some of these tensions — the willingness to commit harm if someone is affronted by a belief that the people like us that are trying to help them are actually not trying to help them.” 

Houry told the committee the gunman fired about 500 rounds, with approximately 180 of those hitting the building. 

“Each bullet was meant for a person, and each of my staff were very traumatized afterwards,” Houry said. “I had staff that were covering their kids in the day care parking lot. There were people that were out at the ride-share as bullets were passing over their head. I have many that won’t speak about vaccines now and removed their names off of the papers. They don’t wish to present publicly anymore because they feel they were personally targeted because of misinformation.”

‘Did we do something wrong?’

HELP Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., said at the beginning of the hearing he intended to invite Kennedy and possibly other HHS officials to testify before his committee later in the year if they wanted to respond to what was said in the Wednesday hearing. 

He also raised concerns that Monarez was fired after less than a month in the role, despite her being nominated by Trump, confirmed by the Senate and Kennedy saying while swearing her in that she had “unimpeachable scientific credentials.”

“We as senators need to ask ourselves, did we look past something? Did we do something wrong?” Cassidy said. “It may be that we did nothing wrong, in which case, Dr. Monarez and Dr. Houry, the onus is upon you to prove that the criticisms leveled by the secretary are not true.”

Cassidy later added that “it may be impossible to learn who’s telling the truth.”

Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, ranking member on the committee, said the Trump administration’s decision to fire Monarez after less than a month in the CDC director’s role was because “she refused to act as a rubber stamp to implement Secretary Kennedy’s dangerous agenda to substantially limit the use of safe and effective vaccines that would endanger the lives of the American people and people throughout the world.”

Sanders raised concerns that the loss of career officials at the CDC and other federal health agencies could hamper the country from addressing disease outbreaks in the months and years ahead. 

Confusion over whether Monarez was recorded

There were a few awkward moments in the hearing, in addition to the serious discussion about the Trump administration’s approach to public health. 

One came after Florida Republican Sen. Ashley Moody mentioned twice during her five minutes of questions that Monarez had spoken with Cassidy about her firing, implying that was somehow improper.  

Cassidy gave a lengthy statement afterward, clarifying the record. 

“As chairman of the committee with jurisdiction over the CDC that favorably reported Dr. Monarez as the CDC director, it is entirely appropriate for someone with oversight concerns to contact my office, or me, or frankly any of us,” Cassidy said. “Upon receiving outreach from Dr. Monarez, I contacted both the secretary and the White House to inquire about what was happening and to express concerns about what was alleged. As soon as the director was fired, the HELP Committee began reviewing the situation, as it is our responsibility, and any and all communication with the witnesses was conducted by HELP staff in coordination with attorneys.”

Another somewhat uncomfortable and slightly confusing moment came after Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin told Monarez that someone had recorded her meeting or meetings with Kennedy.

Mullin then repeatedly questioned her recollection of her conversations with Kennedy, implying that he had a different view because he had listened to the recording. 

The exchange led Cassidy to give another statement to the committee. He appeared somewhat frustrated that someone gave just one senator on the panel the recording, that Mullin had not shared it with any other members of the committee and that HHS had chosen not to give it to the committee in response to a request for documents related to Monarez’s firing. 

“If a recording does not exist, I ask Sen. Mullin to retract his line of questions,” Cassidy said. “I’ll also note that if he has it, I’m also curious why only one senator was given this and why we’re just hearing about it now.”

A few minutes later, Cassidy announced to the hearing room that Mullin told reporters elsewhere that he was mistaken about there being a recording of the meeting or meetings. 

Monarez lawyer

Several GOP senators on the panel also questioned Monarez at length about when and why she chose to hire legal representation and why she ultimately went with Mark Zaid, who has made public statements against Trump and his policies. 

Monarez testified that she wasn’t aware of Zaid’s political beliefs when she hired him and hasn’t spoken with him about politics. 

“I was seeking some critical counsel to be able to help me make sure that I was understanding and aware of everything that had transpired and preparing for what might be next, including this committee hearing,” Monarez said. “Mark and I have never spoken about politics. I never asked him about his politics. He has never asked me about my politics.”