Leading OB-GYN group breaks from CDC on maternal vaccination schedule | US healthcare
The leading professional organization for obstetricians and gynecologists in the United States launches its first-ever motherhood campaign vaccination program and departed from federal recommendations for the first time.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has long recommended vaccinations during pregnancy, but this is the first time it has published them as an official schedule.
The Trump administration, led by Robert F Kennedy Jr, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and a long-time vaccine critic, has withdrawn recommendations for flu and Covid vaccines. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which provides recommendations to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was planning to focus on vaccines for pregnant women next, before the committee was halted by a judge’s order.
Tracy Beth Høeg, a sports medicine doctor who oversaw a study of vaccines at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) until she was fired in May, claimed, without definitive data, that the RSV vaccine was lethal to babies. First to work The study, using real-world data from the United States published last week on Jama Network Open, found that RSV vaccination during pregnancy was 68% effective against hospitalization of babies younger than three months.
Laura Riley, chief of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Weill Cornell Medicine and an ACOG member, said at a press conference about the announcement that the administration’s recommendations are not based on science: “I don’t think the evidence supports their recommendations. The evidence supports our recommendation.”
The new ACOG program recently announced recommends four vaccines for all pregnant women: flu; Covid; tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis (Tdap); and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Vaccinations such as hepatitis B and measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) may also be recommended for some people who have co-morbidities or are at risk of developing certain diseases.
Christopher Zahn, chief of clinical practice and health equity and quality at ACOG, said the guidance is intended to be an accessible resource for providers, patients and pharmacists to “provide clear, evidence-based guidance and address the increasing vaccine misinformation circulating.”
About 13 medical societies have endorsed this plan, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP).
“At the same time we were releasing this information, the HHS secretary was saying that Covid vaccines are not required in children and pregnant women, so we needed to clear up some of that confusion as well,” Riley said. He noted “very clear data” that Covid vaccinations during pregnancy still help prevent serious outcomes such as hospitalization and premature birth.
“As pediatricians, when we talk about protecting children, we often focus on what happens after they are born, but protections actually start much earlier than that during pregnancy,” said Andrew Racine, MD, president of the AAP. “Babies are among the populations most susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseases, and they rely on the adults around them to keep them safe in the first few months of their lives before they have the opportunity to develop their own immunity,” he said, adding that maternal vaccinations are a “key element” of protection.
“The science is clear,” said Margot Savoy, AAFP’s chief medical officer. He said vaccines provide “critical protection” during pregnancy.
Zahn pointed out that vaccines protect the pregnant person, the baby and society at large.
Kevin Ault, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Western Michigan University and an ACOG member, said about 70 percent of pregnant women have received the Tdap and RSV vaccines in the United States, but that rate drops to about 30 percent for flu and even less for Covid. But he said there are disparities between publicly and privately insured people in both vaccination rates and infant outcomes. “Overall we could have done better”
Obstetricians and gynecologists used to be in the rooms where federal recommendations were made; Several members of ACOG, including Riley and Ault, were in ACIP working groups until these groups dropped out of meetings under the Kennedy administration.
ACOG withdrew from ACIP in early 2026 due to “concerns about recent changes that undermine the committee’s scientific integrity and evidence-based approach to vaccine policy,” Zahn said. “Our relationship with the CDC has been incredibly important for years. But…we need to move to a different approach.”
ACOG’s recommendations, previously published as a toolkit for each vaccine, are “in sync” with the CDC through 2025, Riley said. But now, he said, “we’re going to have to do things differently now that the CDC isn’t exactly what we hoped for.” The recommendations were created through a comprehensive review of data from the Vaccine Integrity Project.
A growing number of patients say they are “doing their own research” on vaccines, often on social media. “Social media is not going away,” said Sarah Vaillancourt, board member of the National Association of Nurse Practitioners for Women’s Health (NPWH). “So how can we, as practicing clinicians, help patients navigate this environment to find the right evidence and information?” He said the program will be helpful because it is accessible not only to providers but also to patients.
Racine said the vast majority of parents want to vaccinate their children, but hesitancy is significantly higher than in the past, causing “significant harm” to pediatric practices. there is evidence It turns out that delaying vaccination increases the chance that children will never get vaccinated.
Providers aren’t just seeing an increase in vaccine hesitancy, Savoy said. Patients are increasingly skeptical of science in general. But often patients just have questions and need to talk about them in detail. He said clinicians might “look a little differently in this conversation” to respond to these concerns, which could help rebuild trust.
Doctors are the most reliable source of information on these issues, and Obstetricians have a special place. “We have a unique opportunity in pregnancy because we see people 10 times in 9 months,” as well as follow-up postpartum and breastfeeding visits, Riley said. “This gives you the opportunity to answer these questions over time” and talk about vaccines for babies during pregnancy and later, she said.
