U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Launches New Drive to Examine Vaccine‑Related Injuries

On Thursday the Department of Health and Human Services announced that U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is kicking off a government‑wide effort to log and study any health problems people say they experience after getting a vaccine.

It’s not the first time Kennedy has taken the issue to the national stage. For years he’s been questioning the safety of vaccines, even founding an anti‑vaccine organization before he was sworn in. He’s also been heard repeating the claim – now widely debunked – that American children receive up to 90 vaccine doses by the time they turn 18, a line that even former President Donald Trump echoed.

The new push centers on a clinic that the National Institutes of Health opened on Monday. The facility will treat patients who report post‑vaccination symptoms and, more importantly, gather data that could shed light on whether there’s any systematic link between shots and later health issues.

In tandem with the clinic, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is proposing to reimburse doctors who forward suspected injury reports to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The CDC, for its part, says it will be updating VAERS to make the system more user‑friendly and more transparent.

All of this rolls up into the broader Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a no‑fault scheme that lets claimants sue the government rather than vaccine manufacturers. Since its inception in 1988, the program has paid out roughly $5 billion across about 12,300 claims, covering 14 compensable injuries tied to 16 vaccine types.

Critics, however, warn that Kennedy’s move could fuel vaccine hesitancy at a moment when public‑health officials are already grappling with falling immunisation rates. Measles, for instance, has made a noticeable comeback in the United States since last year, a trend many attribute to declining vaccination coverage.

Medical experts stress that childhood vaccines undergo rigorous placebo‑controlled trials and continuous safety monitoring after approval. The American Academy of Pediatrics notes that these safeguards have kept vaccines among the safest medical interventions available.

Nevertheless, Kennedy’s latest initiative adds another chapter to his long‑standing campaign to reshape federal immunisation policy, a campaign that is now intersecting with legal challenges over proposed changes to the U.S. childhood vaccination schedule.