How to Talk to Your Loved Ones About Childhood Vaccines

A new executive order seeks to overhaul the childhood immunization schedule. It would reduce the number of vaccines recommended to all children from 18 to 11, spread out vaccines across multiple appointments, and separate the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three shots.

You may have concerns. Your loved ones may have questions. So, we’re laying out some talking points you can use to reassure anyone worried about what this executive order means for their children’s health—with some help from Ben Lopman, PhD, an epidemiologist and vaccine researcher at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health.

“The executive order isn't grounded in science,” says Lopman. “It rests on the false premise that these vaccines cause autism—a claim decades of evidence have disproven. Like earlier actions from this administration, it manufactures doubt about vaccines where none belongs.”

The MMR Vaccine Is Still Available—and Still Safe

There currently are not separate shots for measles, mumps, and rubella approved for use in the United States. Developing them would require years of work from pharmaceutical companies, so they aren’t even on the horizon.

The MMR vaccine is still available everywhere in the U.S. It does not cause autism. It is safe, and it protects against diseases that can lead to serious health problems and death.

It is particularly important to vaccinate kids against measles right now, because the U.S. is experiencing its largest measles outbreak in 35 years. There have been over 2,400 cases this year, and 20% of them were in children.

Pediatricians’ Vaccine Recommendations Have Not Changed

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has not changed their recommended childhood vaccine schedule. They still recommend vaccinating all children against 18 diseases between birth and a child’s 18th birthday.

Vaccinating only high-risk children for diseases like RSV and hepatitis B, as the executive order recommends, can be dangerous.

“Uptake falls across the board and greatest among the families with the least access to care,” says Lopman. “When coverage slips below the herd-immunity threshold, these diseases come back. First for the kids too young or too immunocompromised to be vaccinated at all–and, these are the children this executive order claims to protect.”

You Can Still Get Multiple Vaccines in One Appointment

The AAP also still recommends getting multiple vaccines in the same visit, something the executive order recommends against.

Spacing vaccines out further than the recommended schedule is not a new idea, but it can be a harmful one.

• Childhood vaccine timing is based on when kids need protection the most. Delaying vaccines leaves them vulnerable to diseases at a time when their immune systems are still developing and can’t fight them off alone.
• The antigens in vaccines do not “overwhelm” a child’s immune system. Young kids are exposed to up to 6,000 antigens a day from their environment, and the entire childhood vaccine schedule only exposes them to 165.

Childhood Vaccines Are Still Covered by Insurance

Any vaccine recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) legally must be covered by insurance. Right now, because of legal action preventing a schedule more in line with the executive order from taking effect, the CDC’s recommended childhood vaccine schedule still matches AAP’s. So, all are still covered.

Private insurers in the America’s Health Insurance Plans group—like Aetna, Cigna, and Kaiser—have also committed to covering all childhood vaccines currently on the schedule until at least the end of 2027.