The Department of Health and Human Services unveiled an agency-wide initiative on Thursday aimed at expanding how federal health agencies investigate, track and clinically evaluate health problems reported following vaccination. The effort centers on a dedicated clinic at the National Institutes of Health that opened Monday to treat and study patients reporting health problems after receiving vaccines. Other measures include a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposal to reimburse physicians for reporting suspected injuries to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a CDC effort to modernize VAERS, and a requirement that electronic health records capture vaccine-related adverse events so the flags follow patients across providers.
Kennedy announced the plan in a video featuring NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz and CDC Director Erica Schwartz, saying the administration is listening to people who report vaccine injuries and wants to make vaccines safer. Kennedy, who founded an anti-vaccine group before taking office, discussed the initiative during an unannounced visit to the NIH campus this week, where he met with patients who believe they were injured by vaccination.
The push lands amid legal challenges to Kennedy’s attempts to alter childhood vaccination schedules and concern among public-health experts about falling immunization rates, particularly against measles, which has resurged in the U.S. since last year. The American Academy of Pediatrics says childhood vaccines are studied in placebo-controlled and comparison-group trials and monitored after approval. The federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a no-fault system in which claimants file against the government rather than manufacturers, has awarded roughly $5 billion across about 12,300 injury and death claims since 1988, with 14 compensable injuries listed across 16 vaccine types.