One day after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly changed the nation’s recommended schedule for childhood immunizations, Colorado’s Health Department on Tuesday promoted a different set of recommendations that stick with the former schedule.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said in a news release that the state’s policy on vaccines “remains grounded in long-standing science, expert consensus and transparency.” The agency encouraged families to use the vaccination schedule recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics, a national organization of children’s medicine specialists.
The extraordinary split — until recently the state had followed CDC recommendations in virtual lockstep — exposes a growing battle of public health advice between federal health agencies led by vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and state governments like Colorado’s that disagree with the changes Kennedy is imposing.
“Colorado’s vaccine guidance is rooted in decades of strong scientific evidence and real-world experience,” Dr. Ned Calonge, CDPHE’s chief medical officer, said in a statement. “Regardless of changes at the federal level, our priority is ensuring families and providers have trusted, evidence-based guidance to keep children and communities healthy.”
How the CDC’s schedule changed
The CDC announced its new schedule without going through the usual steps of research and analysis by an independent committee of experts called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. (That committee has itself been criticized after Kennedy fired all of its members — including a Colorado doctor — and replaced them with hand-picked members, including several who have previously expressed skepticism of some vaccines.)
The new schedule for kids takes the number of diseases recommended for vaccination to 11 from 17. The vaccines for some diseases, such as COVID and the flu, have moved from being recommended annually to being subject to what the federal government calls “shared clinical decision-making,” meaning they can only be administered after conversation with a doctor.
Other vaccinations, such as those for hepatitis A and B, are now recommended only for “high-risk groups and populations” and are subject to the same talk with a doc for those not considered high-risk.
Vaccines for diseases like measles, mumps, whooping cough, polio and chicken pox remain recommended for everyone. Federal health officials said vaccines recommended at any level will remain covered by insurance.
The new schedule follows a memo issued by President Donald Trump instructing health authorities to align the United State’s pediatric immunization schedule with the “best practices from peer, developed countries.” Following that memo, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a report on the immunization schedule that was written by two scientists who had been critical of some public health measures during the COVID pandemic.
“President Trump directed us to examine how other developed nations protect their children and to take action if they are doing better,” Kennedy said in a statement. “After an exhaustive review of the evidence, we are aligning the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule with international consensus while strengthening transparency and informed consent. This decision protects children, respects families, and rebuilds trust in public health.”
Specifically, the new schedule aligns closely to that of Denmark, which recommends vaccination for 10 diseases. That makes Denmark an outlier among other large, developed nations, which typically recommend vaccination for between 13 and 16 diseases. The head of Denmark’s version of the CDC told The New York Times that the decision to recommend fewer vaccinations is based on cost-effectiveness for a country with a universal health care system and a high standard of living, not based on safety or efficacy.
What Colorado recommends
By breaking with the CDC, Colorado continues to recommend annual flu and COVID vaccinations, a first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine for infants shortly after birth, and two doses of the HPV vaccine at age 9 or older, instead of the one dose now on the CDC’s schedule.
Nothing will change about the state’s required vaccines for schoolkids, since Colorado lawmakers last year took the step of decoupling the state’s vaccination list from CDC recommendations. Lawmakers also passed a bill requiring health insurance plans regulated by the state to continue covering preventive vaccines recommended as of January 2025 — so, ignoring subsequent federal changes.
But public health experts locally are worried that the federal changes will mean fewer kids getting vaccinated in Colorado, and that could have broader health consequences for the state. Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatrician who leads a new organization called Colorado Chooses Vaccines, said preventable diseases such as measles, COVID and whooping cough can have long-term and even lifelong health consequences for those sickened.
He said the federal government’s approach of aligning the immunization schedule with Denmark’s or other countries’ is flawed because it doesn’t take into account the overall health systems and disease threats in those countries.
“Parents are hearing a lot of information right now — much of it confusing and misleading,” O’Leary said in a statement. “Our role as physicians is to cut through that noise and share what the science actually shows, so families can make informed decisions with confidence.”