Despite today’s approval by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to drop the decades-long universal birth-dose hepatitis B vaccine recommendation, 77% of Americans favor the vaccine for newborns, but only 35% favor giving it at birth and 51% by one month, according to a poll today from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Recommendations made by ACIP, whose members were handpicked by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., need to be approved by the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who is a former deputy of Kennedy’s.
The survey asked, “The CDC recommends that all children receive the hepatitis B vaccine at birth. If a newborn in your household were eligible to get the vaccine, how likely, if at all, would you be to recommend that person get a hepatitis B vaccine?”
Among the 1,637 respondents, 77% indicate that they would be either very likely (52%) or somewhat likely (25%) to recommend the vaccine. Almost one-fourth (23%) say they would be unlikely to recommend the vaccine, split between “not too” (12%) and “not at all” likely (11%).
Support crossed party lines: 90% of self-identified Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents, 65% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, and 71% of non-leaning independents recommended the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns.
Most recommend vaccine by 1 month of age
When those surveyed were asked the youngest age at which they would recommend the vaccine for a child in their household, 35% chose birth, 16% said one month (for a total of 51% by one month), 14% said age 4, 11% chose age 12, and 7% said 19 years old. (Those were the only options given.) Sixteen percent would not recommend the vaccine.
Forty percent of respondents correctly said the hepatitis B vaccine protects against liver disease, when asked to choose among a number of diseases and ailments, while 32% said they weren’t sure and 13% chose “none of the above.”
The poll was conducted November 17 to December 1, and its margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
