Overview:
A new executive order flies in the face of physician recommendations for childhood vaccines.
President Trump signed an executive order last week calling for fewer childhood vaccines, citing a long-debunked theory that vaccines are linked to autism.
The order recommends reducing vaccinations against 11 diseases — down from 18 recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2024 — including measles, polio, tetanus and whooping cough. The seven diseases cut from the immunization list are COVID-19, the flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, bacterial meningitis and RSV. It also calls for administering all childhood immunizations at separate health care appointments.
Speaking from the White House a week ago Monday, Trump said, “Decades ago, children only received a small fraction of the vaccines required today. In those times, people were healthier, and the high rates of autism observed now did not exist. There is a reason for such epidemic rates of autism.”
The persistent myth linking vaccines and autism is rooted in a retracted study from the late 1990s, and no subsequent study has found any relationship between the two.
Jicarilla Apache pediatrician Dr. Yoldandra Gomez told Native News Online that Native communities must stay vigilant with immunization, noting that RSV, a respiratory infection, affects American Indian and Alaska Native children at four to 10 times the rate of children in non-Native communities.
“I think it overall just confuses the whole picture of vaccine recommendations that have been in place for many, many years,” Gomez said. “Native American children are sometimes the canary in the coal mine, so to speak, because we are a disenfranchised community. Our children tend to suffer from these diseases at higher rates than other children.”
Gomez said Trump’s order holds little sway when it comes to what pediatricians will recommend to their patients, and it’s unlikely anything will change at the doctor’s office.
Changes to the federal childhood vaccine schedule require approval from the CDC director. Last year, Susan Monarez, Ph.D., the first Senate-confirmed director of the agency, was unceremoniously fired after disagreeing with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccine policies. Dr. Erica Schwartz was sworn in this month as the agency’s new director. Schwartz has yet to comment on the order.
Gomez is concerned, however, that the administration recommends families discuss the vaccine schedule with their physicians. For remote Native communities where contact with a physician is scarce, that may not be possible.
“What they don’t understand is that in Native American communities there aren’t that many physicians for families to talk with about these things,” Gomez said. “Usually they are seen by nursing staff, or there’s immunization clinics where a lot of Native children get their vaccinations updated. What’s missing is that unique physician to patient family discussion. Native families are being put at a disadvantage.”
Instead, she directs families to the American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization that sets clinical guidelines, including vaccine schedules. The association vehemently pushed back against Trump’s order and continues to recommend vaccines to protect against all 18 diseases in its 2026 immunization schedule.
“Vaccine recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics are tailored to the health of children living in the United States and are based on decades of research and systematic tracking of real-world experiences,” AAP President Andrew D. Racine, M.D., Ph.D., FAAP, said in a statement. “Pediatricians recommend children receive certain vaccines at specific ages based on when children’s immune systems will respond best and when they are most vulnerable to certain diseases.”
Trump’s order asks that the MMR vaccine — immunization against measles, mumps and rubella administered together in one shot — be given as separate shots. However, according to the AAP, individual shots for the diseases have not been available in the U.S. since being phased out of production in 2009. With measles cases at a 35-year high, the executive order is especially reckless, advocates say.
Besides the lack of evidence supporting spacing out vaccines, Gomez said more visits to the doctor’s office aren’t realistic for Native families living on remote reservations, where access to health care is already a challenge.
“A lot of our families have to travel 60 miles or more to see their providers for pediatrician visits, so again, it doesn’t make any sense what the administration is saying. In our communities, we’re different. We have issues with access.”
The White House said the executive order will not change insurance coverage for vaccinations recommended prior to the order.
Gomez’s recommendations for Native families echo those of physicians across the country: Stick to the doctor’s orders.
“I would never give a vaccine that I feel is harmful to a child,” Gomez said. “I feel that overall we need to hold our course in staying with what’s tried and true.”
