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With Medical Societies "Uninvited" From ACIP Vaccine Working Groups, Is There Any Hope for Harmonized Schedules?
William Schaffner, MD, a long-time liaison from the NFID to the ACIP working groups, is concerned about fragmentation of US vaccine recommendations.
"Now this opens the door for disharmony, a difference between what the professional organizations will say and what the ACIP will say," William Schaffner, MD, observed. "And that will lead to confusion."
Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University who has been deeply involved with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and participated in its vaccine-review working groups for decades, was referring to another recent shakeup around the ACIP. On July 31, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. notified approximately 30 professional medical and public health organizations that their liaisons would no longer participate in those ACIP vaccine-review working groups, prompting swift release of a statement by the American Medical Association and partners that said:
The observation above from Schaffner, made during a recent interview with Patient Care,© echoes the warning from public health experts about the change, which they said could undercut consensus in vaccine policy development and fragment recommendations. Previously, liaison members, including Schaffner, have helped shape proposed policy by contributing essential clinical, public health, and scientific insights during rigorous data reviews. "Since these professional liaison representatives will no longer be able to participate in the working groups, their wisdom perspective, their real life experience, won't be available in creating the recommendations," Schaffner continued. Nor will the organizations have "as much buy in as they used to."
In the short video excerpt above, from a longer conversation, Schaffner states his concern for the future "disharmony" he and his colleagues anticipate.
The following transcript has been lightly edited for style.
Patient Care: The HHS Secretary just announced that many of the medical organizations we've been talking about, including the AMA, the Infectious Disease Society of America, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, will no longer be invited to participate in developing vaccine recommendations. What are the implications?
William Schaffner, MD: Just to clarify, those liaison representatives from the professional organizations will no longer be able to participate in the vaccine working groups. That's where the sausage gets made. You know, all the data are reviewed very, very carefully, and proposed recommendations are given to the full committee. They still can attend the full committee meetings. And I think the reason for that is that's in the ACIP charter. But you're exactly correct, since these professional liaison representatives will no longer be able to participate in the working groups, their wisdom, perspective, their real life experience, won't be available in creating the recommendations, and these organizations won't have as much buy-in as they used to. You know, we wanted to harmonize all the recommendations. We wanted ACIP and all the professional organizations to say the same thing with possibly not exactly the same words, but basically the same recommendations, harmony. Now this opens the door for disharmony, a difference between what the professional organizations will say and what the ACIP will say. And as we said before, that will lead to confusion.
William Schaffner, MD, is professor of preventive medicine with a primary appointment in the department of health policy and a professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, in Nashville, TN. Schaffner is past medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID) and formerly served as NFID liaison to the ACIP at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He is also a past president of NFID.
For more of our conversation with Dr Schaffner, see:
What's the Mood Among Infectious Disease Experts Right Now? We Asked William Schaffner, MD
The ACIP's Rich History of Debate is in Jeopardy, Not A Good Sign for Science, ID Expert Says
How to Talk to Patients About Respiratory Virus Vaccines This Year? The Same Way We Always Do
