Medical groups endorse American Academy of Pediatrics vaccine list over CDC advice
(TNND) — A dozen leading medical groups lent their support to the American Academy of Pediatrics' 2026 childhood vaccine recommendations, which run counter to recently revised recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, or AAP, published its updated vaccine schedule Monday, weeks after the CDC trimmed the list of shots it advises all children receive.
The AAP recommends routine immunizations against 18 diseases, including RSV, hepatitis B, the annual flu shot, and others that the CDC now only recommends for high-risk groups or in consultation with a doctor.
The CDC now recommends routine vaccinations against just 11 diseases, down from 17 as of the end of 2024. The revision, announced in early January, stemmed from an order from President Donald Trump to compare and possibly align U.S. childhood vaccine recommendations to those from similarly developed countries.
Neither the CDC nor the AAP recommendations are mandates. States set vaccine requirements to attend school.
The AAP had long partnered with the CDC to present a unified set of vaccine recommendations but split with the government’s list last summer. The AAP said its new 2026 vaccine schedule is mostly the same as recommendations it released in August.
“For more than 60 years, millions of children and countless American communities have experienced the benefits of routine childhood vaccinations,” Dr. Andrew Racine, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in a news release. “The AAP is working with our partners across medicine and public health to ensure that parents have credible, science-backed vaccine recommendations they can trust. If parents have questions about vaccines or anything else, your child’s pediatrician is there to help.”
Compare the current recommendations from the CDC and AAP.
The AAP said 12 medical and health care organizations, including the American Medical Association and American Pharmacists Association, have endorsed its vaccine list.
Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt has said it will follow the AAP’s immunization schedule, calling it the “best way to keep children healthy and protect against health complications and hospitalizations.”
Y. Tony Yang, a professor of health policy at George Washington University, said the medical frontline is sticking with the AAP and prioritizing long-standing medical evidence over recent federal shifts they view as a departure from optimal care.
“Specialists argue that the pacing and combination of vaccines should be rooted in a child's immune readiness, not political changes to federal lists,” Yang said via email.
Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of Brown University's Pandemic Center, said she hopes the AAP’s set of recommendations carries more weight with doctors and parents, saying they’re the only set of recommendations based on scientific evidence.
She said most pediatricians “understand the stakes of not vaccinating kids appropriately,” but she said some pharmacists might simply opt out of vaccinations to avoid the mess of competing recommendations.
Nuzzo noted reports that pregnant women ran into problems accessing COVID-19 vaccines at some pharmacies last year after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said pregnant women shouldn't get the shots. Nuzzo said the CDC’s changes to childhood vaccine recommendations might have the same chilling effect at pharmacies.
But Nuzzo said the medical community’s endorsement of the AAP recommendations “speaks to the triumph of evidence. And it speaks to how these professional societies have generally conducted themselves, which is that they want to make data and evidence, not ideology, the foundation for their practice.”
Nuzzo said there was no new scientific evidence to warrant the CDC’s decision to whittle down its list of universally recommended childhood immunizations.
She said the government is going to say it’s not preventing families from getting the vaccinations, but Nuzzo said moving some previously routine immunizations, like the flu shot or hepatitis B, under the umbrella of “shared clinical decision-making” sows doubt and confusion.
“First of all, not everybody can get in to see a provider and have that lengthy conversation,” she said.
And the shift “implies that there are some kids for whom the vaccines wouldn't be recommended or for whom the vaccines would not be safe, and there's nothing further from the truth there,” she said.
