Why RFK’s CDC Is Endorsing ‘Shared Decisionmaking’ for Vaccines

In the year that US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been in office, his agency has made unprecedented changes to the childhood immunization schedule, removing universal recommendations for a half-dozen vaccines in favor of “shared clinical decisionmaking.”

The term has become something of a mantra for Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Against (MAHA) movement. National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, who is also temporarily leading the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has said he believes “very fundamentally in shared decisionmaking.” And in her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate health committee in February, US surgeon general nominee Casey Means invoked shared clinical decisionmaking when senators pressed her about her views on vaccines.

On its face, the term seems reasonable. It refers to a conversation between a health care provider and a patient or their guardian about the benefits and risks of a ...