‘These are the changes we have been fighting for,’ an ally of the health secretary said.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has changed the charter for the influential Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel.
The April update pertains to both the criteria for members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the scope of the committee. Charters for federal advisory committees such as ACIP must be refiled every two years, per federal law.
Kennedy also added four new liaison organizations to the panel that do not appear to have ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Liaisons do not vote, but have historically participated in public and private committee meetings.
Key Changes
One major update is the loosening of membership requirements.
ACIP’s charter previously stated that members must have expertise in one of four categories: immunization practices; the use of vaccines and other immunobiologic agents in clinical practice or preventive medicine; vaccine research; or the assessment of vaccine efficacy and safety.
The only exception to those requirements was for at least one person who had knowledge regarding “consumer perspectives and/or social and community aspects of immunization programs.” That usually included one person in the past.
The new charter says that in addition to the previously outlined expertise, members can be chosen from experts in medicine, toxicology, pediatric neurodevelopment, data science, statistical analysis, health economics, and “recovery from serious vaccine injuries, or public health.”
Kennedy, in 2025, removed the existing ACIP members and selected new ones, citing concerns about conflicts of interest.
A federal judge in March stayed those appointments and updates to vaccine recommendations, some of which were made based on votes by the new members. The judge said that Kennedy and other officials did not follow proper procedure and that many of the new members lacked the expertise outlined in ACIP’s charter.
Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and one of the people selected by Kennedy, told The Epoch Times in an email that “the new charter reflects a very positive change towards [a] more comprehensive assessment of benefits and risks of vaccines that leverages and integrates [a] broader set of relevant knowledge domains and expertise.”
The updated charter also adds language on immunization safety. It now says that in addition to providing advice to the director of the CDC on effectively controlling vaccine-preventable diseases, ACIP will advise the CDC on “decreased symptomatology” for the diseases as well as “gaps in vaccine safety research including adverse effects following vaccination.” Additionally, ACIP shall also be responsible moving forward for “reviewing vaccination schedules by other countries and international organizations.”
“From a consumer perspective, the new ACIP charter is encouraging in that it contains language about the duty of the federal vaccine policymaking committee to review data on vaccine safety and adverse events, fill in knowledge gaps about vaccine risks, and make recommendations about vaccination schedules that take into account cumulative exposures to vaccines and vaccine components, among other factors,” Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center, told The Epoch Times in an email.
Vicky Pebsworth, who holds a PhD in health systems administration and health services organization and policy, and is on the information center’s board, was appointed to ACIP by Kennedy.
