Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services floated new standards for vaccine approvals, rescinded longstanding Covid-19 vaccine recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women, and fired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee. These actions represent a significant shift in the federal government’s approach to vaccine policy and the safeguarding of the public’s health.
The Vaccine Integrity Project, launched in April by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, anticipated this trajectory and the risks posed to the widely shared goal of protecting people from vaccine-preventable diseases. Its mission is simple and urgent: to ensure that vaccine use in the United States remains grounded in the best available evidence and focused squarely on protecting the public.
Over the past several months, the project has engaged more than 80 stakeholders, including clinicians, academics, public health officials, insurers, and industry leaders, to assess how nongovernmental actors can defend vaccine science and use at a time when official public health channels are under stress.
What emerged was a shared recognition of two immediate priorities: continuing the development and dissemination of trusted evidence-based immunization guidance and countering the spread of inaccurate health information. The Vaccine Integrity Project will soon publish its findings from these stakeholder engagements in a final report, concluding the work of its steering committee and signaling an end to its exploratory phase, shifting its focus to action.
To that end, later this summer, the Vaccine Integrity Project is convening experts from across the vaccination ecosystem to assess the evidence on influenza, RSV, and Covid-19. Our partners will use this evidence base to develop immunization guidelines.
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Here’s how this collaborative process is going to work: The Vaccine Integrity Project will assemble scientific briefs for these three respiratory diseases, reflecting current virology, epidemiology, vaccine effectiveness, and safety data. We will then turn it over to medical professional associations, whose physician members are on the frontlines providing care to Americans, to draft and disseminate vaccine recommendations and guidelines. The associations will work from this single comprehensive evidence brief, and, as needed, supplement it with data specific to individual populations.
For this effort, for example, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) will focus on pregnant women; the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on the pediatric population; the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) on the immunocompromised and high-risk populations, including the elderly; and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) on healthy adults. It is work in which the organizations have years of experience. The difference is that this summer, the process will be independent of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Participants will disclose their conflicts of interest, and the effort will be independently funded by philanthropists.
The process described above is not a shadow ACIP. Much of ACIP’s work is inherently governmental, intersecting with health insurance coverage and federal payment systems. What we are convening is designed solely to give clinicians the evidence-backed guidance they need to help protect Americans this year from respiratory viruses that hospitalize and kill tens of thousands annually. The long-term goal for everyone who cares about public health is to restore ACIP’s role in the vaccine ecosystem as soon as possible.
These actions are necessary given the measurable public health impact of vaccination efforts. According to CDC estimates, flu vaccination alone prevented nearly 10 million illnesses, 120,000 hospitalizations, and 7,900 deaths during the 2023–24 season. And yet, more than 200 children died from the flu that same season, over 80% of whom were unvaccinated. Meanwhile, Covid-19 vaccination last year provided 50% added protection against associated hospitalizations among healthy adults over 65.
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The Vaccine Integrity Project’s work is inherently collaborative and is not trying to stand in for government bodies. We aim to lock arms with doctors, scientists, and public health experts and promote integrity, openness, and scientific rigor.
No one group can take on all the challenges that lie ahead, including building infrastructure to support state and local health departments, stabilizing vaccine safety systems, protecting insurance coverage, and coordinating policy efforts across the ecosystem.
Now, the scientific and medical communities are stepping up to safeguard the systems they helped build over decades. In moments like this, it’s important to affirm the role of science and evidence in guiding public health decisions.
Michael T. Osterholm, Ph.D., M.P.H., is McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health and the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. He is also a member of the Vaccine Integrity Project Steering Committee.
