This story by Delilah Brumer appeared on Colorado Newsline on June 30, 2025.
Many Colorado lawmakers and medical experts were already concerned about how the Trump administration could shake up vaccine recommendations and access in the state. Then Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, dismissed all 17 experts on the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing them with eight new members, many of whom are seen as vaccine skeptics.
But months before the changes at ACIP, state lawmakers approved a bill meant to insulate Colorado from vaccine policies that are inconsistent with scientific evidence. House Bill 25-1027 allows the state Board of Health to go beyond exclusively following ACIP for school vaccine requirements and consider recommendations from doctors’ groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Physicians. It was signed into law in April.
State Sen. Lindsey Daugherty, an Arvada Democrat, was one of the bill’s sponsors. She said the provision that gives the state Board of Health more flexibility came from “discussions of what could be the worst thing that could happen (with ACIP), and how do we protect Colorado, future-looking?”
“Unfortunately, we’ve had to play on the defensive a lot in Colorado, and that’s something we take really seriously, because now, at least in Colorado, folks can look to science-based recommendations for vaccines for kids, instead of the politically-stacked ACIP,” Daugherty said.
The federal advisory committee, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is now chaired by Martin Kulldorff, a doctor and former Harvard Medical School professor who was fired in 2024 after declining the COVID-19 vaccine.
The committee met for the first time with its new members on Wednesday and Thursday, and voted to ban thimerosal, a harmless preservative used in a small portion of flu vaccines. The committee also announced it will reexamine current recommendations around childhood vaccination schedules and hepatitis B immunizations.
“Some media outlets have been very harsh on the new members of this committee, issuing false accusations and making concerted efforts to put scientists in either a pro- or anti-vaccine box,” Kulldorff said during the commission meeting. “Such labels undermine critical scientific inquiry, and it further feeds the flame of vaccine hesitancy. To thoroughly scrutinize and assure the safety and efficacy of vaccines is a pro-vaccine position.”
But many other doctors have raised concerns. David Higgins, a pediatrician and preventive medicine specialist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, said that, ideally, states would not need to have separate vaccine recommendations. He added that with “the dismantling of ACIP,” the Colorado law is necessary.
“I’m glad that Colorado took these proactive steps to safeguard evidence-based vaccine recommendations,” Higgins said.
When parents of his patients raise concerns about the safety or effectiveness of vaccines, Higgins listens to them without judgment. He clears up misconceptions, answers questions and communicates the science behind vaccines.
“We as pediatricians welcome parents’ questions and are ready to listen and try to understand and address parents’ concerns about vaccines,” Higgins said. “Vaccine hesitancy is not new.”
What is new, though, is the rapid spread of vaccine misinformation on social media, and an erosion of trust in ACIP, Higgins added.
“With the CDC and ACIP bypassing normal processes that are in place to ensure recommendations are made with scientific integrity, transparency and thoroughness, trust is going to be degraded,” Higgins said. “It’s going to lower trust in those institutions and that will trickle down to less confident recommendations and lower trust from parents.”
Higgins is on the board of Immunize Colorado, a nonprofit that focuses on vaccine education. The organization hosts vaccine information sessions at clinics and local events.
“We are constantly doing vaccine education, and we’re not a direct vaccine provider, but we educate the community,” said Susan Lontine, Immunize Colorado’s executive director.
Recommendations made by ACIP can directly impact which vaccines insurance companies are obligated to cover. With that in mind, Colorado lawmakers in April passed Senate Bill 25-196, another preventive care-related law.
The law empowers the state insurance commissioner to maintain the coverage of state-regulated preventive measures, including vaccines, even if ACIP recommendations change.
State Sen. Kyle Mullica, a Thornton Democrat, was one of the sponsors of that law, and of HB-1027. Mullica, an emergency room nurse, said it’s crucial that Coloradans get accurate information about vaccines and have affordable access to them.
“Americans are getting mixed signals and that’s really terrifying, because politics should not be in public health,” Mullica said. “We should rely on science.”
Amid significant vaccine misinformation, Kim Warner, an obstetrician and the president of the Colorado Medical Society, said one-on-one conversations between doctors and patients remain key.
“We can come out with recommendations all day long,” Warner said. “But I think sitting in the exam room and talking to patients about what vaccines are and aren’t, and what they do and what they don’t do, and answering their specific questions is one of the strongest things that we can do for patients.”