The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) released a plan detailing its course of action to address childhood vaccines.
Topics to be considered by the Childhood and Adolescent Immunization Schedule WG members include vaccine timing, concurrent administration of inoculations, safety ingredients, and efficacy.
Specifically addressing the safety of vaccines, the document asks, “Do either of the two different aluminum adjuvants increase the risk of asthma?”
The workgroup’s assessment aims to identify gaps in research studies, “determine whether a change in the vaccine schedule may be warranted,” and communicate these findings to the full ACIP panel.
Further, the group “will also consider these issues for particular subgroups of children, such as children born pre-maturely, children with immune deficiencies, or children with cancer,” as well as “engage external subject matter experts, as needed, to support implementation of key activities.”
The assessment of vaccines comes as the CDC recently recommended that children receive a standalone vaccine against chickenpox instead of one combined with measles, mumps, and rubella. The push for individual choice in vaccination “means that the clinical decision to vaccinate should be based on patient characteristics that unlike age are difficult to incorporate in recommendations, including risk factors for the underlying disease as well as the characteristics of the vaccine itself and the best available evidence of who may benefit from vaccination,” the agency explained.
Similarly, FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary previously suggested that the agency will revisit whether infants should receive the Hepatitis B vaccine.
“I personally don’t believe that the evidence is solid to say the Hep B shot needs to be given at birth,” the FDA commissioner said during an interview with Martha MacCallum of Fox News. “It’s a sexually transmitted infection you’re trying to prevent. Kids are not sexually active until they’re of sexual age. So, a lot of parents say we’re going to wait until they’re 10, or 11, or 12.”
