President Trump signed an executive order issuing what his administration is calling the gold standard for childhood vaccine recommendations.
The order draws upon an earlier assessment conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which “identified a set of consensus vaccines that are consistently recommended in all peer countries and found that the United States currently recommends more childhood vaccines than any peer nation, including more than twice as many vaccine doses as some European nations,” it says.
Trump’s order declared that his administration is “taking further action to reaffirm that it is the policy of the United States that the core childhood vaccine recommendations should be aligned with scientific evidence and best practices from peer, developed countries while preserving access to vaccines currently available to Americans.”
The vaccines recommended for all children include those for measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, Haemophilus influenzae type B, pneumococcal disease, human papillomavirus, and varicella, the order says. Vaccines for certain high-risk groups include respiratory syncytial virus monoclonal antibodies, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningococcal B, meningococcal ACWY, and dengue.
Inoculations that are considered shared clinical decision-making include hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, influenza, and COVID-19.
The new order aligns with one President Trump signed in May, which directed the CDC to realign the childhood vaccine schedule with that of European nations.
At the end of 2024, the CDC recommended 17 vaccines for children. The agency then sought to cut the recommendations to 11. An updated document from January 2025 found that the United States was a “global outlier among peer nations in the number of target diseases included in its childhood vaccination schedule and in the total number of recommended vaccine doses.”
