Protect Childhood Vaccinations! Express Your Concerns to the CDC Due Nov 24, 2025
Public Comments to the CDC’s ACIP vaccine committee close on Nov 24 at 11:59 pm EST. Children must be protected from infectious diseases.
Speak up and tell the CDC’s ACIP vaccine committee that families must have access to childhood vaccines. Children are at increasing risk from infectious diseases due to very low current vaccination rates, and many U.S. communities are now experiencing outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles, pertussis, and COVID. We need your voice today to urge the CDC to support ongoing access to childhood vaccines and safeguard the health of our children’s future.
Leaders at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), led by Dr. Marty Makary and Dr. Vinay Prasad have removed recommendations for COVID vaccines in children. Similarly, the CDC’s vaccine committee, Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), now consists entirely of new members appointed by Robert F Kennedy Jr. (RFK). Several of these members are known for opposing vaccines. During the June 2025 meeting, ACIP removed recommendations for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and varicella vaccinations among children ages 12 to 47 months, declaring them as optional. This is the wrong time to take a limited approach to vaccinations. From early 2025 through Nov 2025, the US has over 1,700 measles infections - the highest total in the past 20 years with over 5,000 cases reported in Canada.
As a result of unscientific and baseless opposition to vaccines, ACIP may consider imposing further restrictions on childhood vaccines at their upcoming Dec 2025 meeting. Current recommendations for access to childhood vaccines must not be limited or reduced. Universal access to COVID vaccines must also be reaffirmed to protect public health during the ongoing COVID pandemic, which continues to cause significant harm with nearly 16,000 COVID deaths occurring from January 2025 through the end of October.
The public has an opportunity to voice opposition to this and prevent such actions by submitting a “Public Comment” for the upcoming Dec 4th to 5th ACIP meeting. Public comments opened on November 13 and will close on November 24.
It is urgent to gather thousands of comments to support childhood vaccines, demonstrate our voices in support of vaccines, and protect the future of public health and medicine. The last day to submit a written public comment is November 24, 2025.
Learn more about the ACIP meeting at the Federal Register or at the CDC.
You may also lend your voice by speaking directly to committee members, giving a live oral comment at the meeting (via online teleconferencing), or by filling out the oral comment registration form (https://www2.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/acip_publiccomment.asp) by November 24th. All fields are required, and you are asked to choose either December 4th or 5th. If you are not affiliated with an organization, you can write “Self” or “Not Affiliated” in the organization field. If you are selected, you will receive a confirmation email and instructions by December 1st, and must respond to confirm your speaking spot. Selected speakers will have 3 minutes. Again, the deadline to register to speak live at ACIP’s meeting is November 24.
Our template below makes it easy to submit a written public comment.
See the CDC’s ACIP meeting page for additional meeting details: https://www.cdc.gov/acip/meetings/index.html#cdc_toolkit_main_toolkit_cat_3-upcoming-meetings
We have provided key talking points below for your comment, and a sample comment is below the divider. Feel free to copy, modify, and share any of the text for your own advocacy.
The strongest comments start with a personal perspective, so please add in a sentence or two about why vaccines matter to you and your community.
Key points include these:
ACIP committee members must support widespread and complete access to all vaccines currently on the child and adolescent vaccine schedules, and restore childhood recommendations for COVID vaccines.
FDA-approved vaccines are safe and effective.
ACIP vaccine recommendations are necessary for national access to vaccines and insurance coverage.
Protect access to the hepatitis B vaccine birth dose to reduce the risk of perinatal hepatitis B transmission or death. Hepatitis B infection can also lead to chronic infection, cirrhosis, and liver cancer later in life.
This committee should reinstate the MMRV vaccine recommendation for children under 4 years old. Coadministration of vaccines and combined vaccines is vital for convenient and timely vaccination.
Include some brief personal comments about why vaccination is essential and why it matters to you, such as how vaccination for a broad range of infectious diseases has positively protected you and/or your community. Optionally, at the beginning of your comment, you may also include information on professional or other credentials, and whether or not you have any financial conflicts of interest relevant to the topic. Feel free to take inspiration from or borrow the language in our sample public comment below.
Submitted written public comments for the meeting must be received by the CDC via Regulations.gov no later than November 24, 2025, at 11:59 pm EST for the committee’s consideration.
Step-By-Step Submission Instructions:
Step 1. Go directly to Submit Your Comment or visit Regulations.gov to submit your comment and search for Docket CDC-2025-0783.
Step 2. Type your comment under the field, “Comment.” (Note: there is a 5000-character limit. If you would like to write more, upload your comment as a PDF document.)
Step 3 (optional). Submit a PDF or Word version of your comment, or scientific articles or other evidence, under “Attach Files.”
Step 4. Select either “Individual” or “Anonymous” depending on whether you want to share your personal information that will be publicly available on the Federal Register.
Step 6. If selecting “Individual,” provide your first and last name at a minimum, while other parts are optional. If you choose “Anonymous,” you can directly submit a comment without sharing your personal information.
Step 7. Click “Submit Comment.”
Sample comment (please personalize)
Docket: CDC-2025-0783
Public Comment for Dec 4 to 5 CDC’s ACIP Committee Meeting
To Congress and Members of the CDC’s ACIP Committee:
I have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
I am a [FOR EXAMPLE: parent/physician/patient/epidemiologist/nurse/concerned American/person with disabilities] and am deeply concerned about the future of childhood vaccinations. This issue is vital to me for the following reasons.
I remain very concerned with the prior termination of all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) committee by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, as well as the appointment of the newest committee members. Former ACIP members are widely esteemed independent scientists or clinicians with deep scientific expertise who provide their understanding of the safety and efficacy of FDA-approved and authorized vaccines. All currently available FDA-approved vaccines are safe and effective. Vaccination rates for many infectious diseases are now very low, and communities across the US are experiencing outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, pertussis, and COVID. These infections can cause serious, potentially lifelong consequences for people’s health. Children in 2025 should not die or become disabled from infectious diseases that are preventable with affordable and effective vaccines. ACIP recommendations guide essential insurance coverage and impact affordable access for uninsured children through the Vaccines for Children program, which has saved more than 1 million lives by preventing numerous infectious diseases (1).
This federal committee must not be used as a platform for misinformation or to sow public distrust in vaccines. Scientific evidence has proven that vaccines are not the cause of autism, and the recent announcement by the CDC regarding vaccines and autism is false information (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccine-safety/about/autism.html).
Nationwide access to safe and effective vaccines must be preserved and restored. COVID vaccine access varies widely from state to state as a response to recent actions by this committee (2). COVID vaccines must be recommended. This committee must protect current recommendations for childhood vaccines. The hepatitis B vaccine birthdose (ideally within 12 hours of birth) greatly reduces the risk of perinatal hepatitis B transmission and death (3) Since its widespread adoption in 1991, the US has had a 99% reduction in child and teen hepatitis B infections (4). Hepatitis B infection can cause chronic infection, cirrhosis, and liver cancer later in life (5). Public health policies must continue to prevent deadly hepatitis B infections.
Coadministration of multiple vaccines on the childhood and adolescent schedule is safe and effective, and this committee should not consider barriers to coadministration or combined vaccines. Coadministration and combined vaccine options are essential for timely vaccine access and to avoid harmful delays in vaccination. The recommendation for the MMRV vaccine under age 4 must be restored, including access through the Vaccines for Children program(6).
I urge members of this committee to protect children worldwide by maintaining and expanding childhood and adolescent vaccination programs, restoring recommendations for COVID vaccines, and upholding the birth dose of Hepatitis B vaccination, while supporting robust vaccine campaigns. You have an important role that requires following scientific evidence and ensuring that decisions are considered, evaluated, and concluded through open and transparent processes, all essential to a democracy. Health policies that affect millions of children and families must be based on valid and proven evidence.
Thank you for your consideration.
References
CDC. About the Vaccines for Children (VFC) Program. Vaccines for Children Program. November 17, 2025. Accessed November 18, 2025. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines-for-children/about/index.html
Kates J, Bell C, Michaud J, Williams E, Tolbert J. Tracking State Actions on Vaccine Policy and Access. KFF. September 24, 2025. Accessed October 8, 2025. https://www.kff.org/covid-19/tracking-state-actions-on-vaccine-policy-and-access/
Immunization Action Coalition. Hepatitis B: What Hospitals Need to Do to Protect Newborns. Published online July 2013. Accessed November 18, 2025. https://www.immunize.org/wp-content/uploads/vaccines/a-z/hepb/end-hepb/birth-dose.pdf
Hepatitis B Foundation. Hepatitis B Vaccine Talking Points. September 15, 2025. Accessed November 18, 2025. https://www.hepb.org/assets/Uploads/HBV-Birth-Dose-Talking-Points-9.16.25.pdf
Tripathi N, Mousa OY. Hepatitis B. In: StatPearls. StatPearls Publishing; 2025. Accessed November 18, 2025. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK555945/
Jenco M. AAP breaks from federal vaccine panel, continues to recommend MMRV vaccine for children under 4. Published online September 19, 2025. Accessed November 18, 2025. https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/33401/AAP-breaks-from-federal-vaccine-panel-continues-to
End of Sample Comment
Complete instructions for written and oral comments, as well as meeting information, can be found at: https://www.cdc.gov/acip/meetings/index.html
CDC’s ACIP Meeting Information in the Federal Register is available at: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/08/29/2025-16706/meeting-of-the-advisory-committee-on-immunization-practices
Submitted written comments or registration to provide oral comments at the meeting must be received by the CDC no later than November 24, 2025, at 11:59 pm Eastern Standard Time.