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Amid worsening medical misinformation, AAP strives for truth

The American Academy of Pediatrics made waves with a childhood vaccine schedule that counters the medical misinformation permeating government medical advice.

Sara Heath
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Published: 02 Sep 2025

The American Academy of Pediatrics made waves a few weeks ago when the organization published its annual pediatric vaccine schedule.

It was far from the first time AAP has done this, but it was nevertheless a key development ahead of this year's respiratory virus season.

"The AAP has been creating immunization schedules since 1938, well before ACIP and the CDC even existed," Jesse Hackell, M.D., the chair of AAP's Committee on Pediatric Workforce, said in reference to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"But what's different this year is, for the first time, it's not the same schedule as the one that ACIP puts out," Hackell said in a recent interview.

The differences in AAP's and ACIP's pediatric vaccine schedules largely center on the COVID vaccine. AAP recommends kids six months to two years get a single dose of the COVID vaccine and two doses for kids over age two with underlying conditions or whose caregivers want them to get the jabs.

But ACIP has different recommendations. Online, the panel says the COVID vaccine is subject to shared clinical decision-making. Recently, the Food and Drug Administration ended the emergency use authorizations for kids under age five, which could make it more difficult for folks to get their children vaccinated. AAP put out a separate statement calling the move "deeply troubling."

"What we've heard from HHS is that the COVID vaccine is not recommended for any healthy children, period," Hackell added.

The divergence between the two bodies is essentially unprecedented, Hackell noted, driven in large part by the changes in ACIP personnel announced back in June. Previously, AAP leaders actually served on ACIP to help inform pediatric vaccine schedules, meaning recommendations were generally the same.

"The AAP has been disinvited from participating in any of these advisory groups, but the experts haven't gone away, fortunately," Hackell explained. "They've been focused on continuing to create the AAP-recommended schedule just as they've always done, knowing full well that it may diverge from the ACIP schedule like it's starting to now."

Hackell confirmed that AAP's childhood vaccine schedule is evidence-based, taking into consideration how vaccines are developed and tested, as well as how they perform after they are brought to market.

But, more than anything, he stressed the role medical misinformation plays in these diverging childhood vaccine schedules and what that could mean for providers down the line.

HHS is acting on medical disinformation

The differing vaccine schedules from AAP and ACIP are a manifestation of the medical misinformation landscape plaguing in the industry at this time.

Healthcare providers, and especially pediatricians working to arm kids with the vaccines they need to stay healthy, have been contending with medical misinformation for some time. Although it's hard to say when the country's medical misinformation problems began, most experts agree it reached a tipping point during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We've been dealing with misinformation for many years," Hackell said, drawing on his 41 years as a pediatrician in New York. "I mean, parents would come in and say, 'I heard the measles vaccine does something.' And we would pull up our references and say, 'there's no evidence whatsoever.'"

Since then, misinformation has risen to unprecedented levels, with 86% of doctors agreeing that medical mis- and disinformation has gotten worse in the past five years, per recent surveying from The Physicians Foundation.

"What's different now is the platform that this misinformation -- and even disinformation, which is willful spreading of incorrect information to somebody who doesn't know better from somebody who does know better or should know better -- the platform is much more prominent," Hackell said. "It's RFK Jr. Such as it is, it's the ACIP."

Those spreading mis- and disinformation get a lot more airtime than they ever have before, Hackell added. Groups like HHS, CDC and ACIP are supposed to rely on scientific information to make guidance decisions, but according to Hackell, those bodies are not accepting that information.

"In the face of study after study after study -- it is criminal for the leaders who are supposed to rely on scientific information to refuse to accept it just because it doesn't agree with their preconceived notions," Hackell said.

"That news travels fast," he continued, stressing the uphill battle that lies ahead for healthcare professionals. "A lie is halfway around the world before the truth gets its shoes on. It takes us a lot of effort one-on-one to combat the misinformation and the disinformation that [HHS and CDC] could spread to millions of people with a single press conference or a single post on social media. The landscape is very different."

But even though the medical misinformation landscape is different than it's ever been before, Hackell said he is confident the medical industry is up to the task. Healthcare professionals can and should assume their roles as patients' most trusted partners in health to communicate with individuals expressing doubts or hesitation about vaccines.

In the next of this two-part series, we'll discuss key patient-provider communication strategies that pediatricians and family medicine providers can use to tackle medical misinformation in this unprecedented landscape.

Sara Heath has reported news related to patient engagement and health equity since 2015.

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