AUCD’s Community Inclusion Team supports the University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD) Network in partnership with the Administration for Community Living.
AUCD’s Maternal and Child Health Engagement supports the Autism CARES Programs, including LEND and DBP Programs.
AUCD’s Public Health Team works to create health promotion and public health efforts that include people with disabilities.
AUCD Emerging Leaders are a part of a community that includes trainees, early career professionals, self-advocates, and family members from AUCD member Centers and Programs.
AUCD's Disability Policy News (DPN) is a weekly newsletter highlighting federal policy issues affecting people with disabilities and their families. DPN features updates in plain language and action steps that people can take to educate policymakers. DPN is published every Friday.
In this edition:
American Medical Association and Vaccine Integrity Project—The American Medical Association (AMA) is partnering with the University of Minnesota’s Vaccine Integrity Project in a new initiative conducting independent research into vaccine safety and efficacy. The initiative will bring together medical professional societies, public health groups, and health care organizations in researching and examining best practices in vaccine policy to keep all populations safe from respiratory diseases. Specifically, the review will focus on flu, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccines. This initiative will convene experts, hold monthly meetings, conduct literature reviews, and ensure data transparency so that their results can be independently verified. The groups themselves will not make vaccine recommendations, but physician members of participating medical societies will develop and disseminate immunization guidance for their respective populations.
American Academy of Pediatrics Lawsuit—Over 100 health organizations, public health academics, and health law and policy leaders filed a legal brief in support of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) changes to vaccine policy. The brief’s signatories include the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, among others.
Governors Public Health Alliance (PHA)—The Governors Public Health Alliance sent a letter to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz about changes made to childhood immunization reporting requirements. The Core Set of Children’s Health Care Quality Measures for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are standardized measures wherein states track how well Medicaid and CHIP are delivering care. States are required to report data on how the care was delivered, including prenatal and pediatric immunization data. In December, CMS announced it was removing the immunization data portion from what states have to report to CMS. The Governors Public Health Alliance is pushing for the decision to be reversed, and announced that the states represented in the PHA will keep tracking childhood immunization data.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has made reshaping vaccine policy a pillar of his policy priorities since he began his tenure at HHS. This includes changing the makeup of various committees and staff at HHS, including the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). In doing this, he is able to make policy changes based on his long-held belief that vaccines are mostly unsafe because they lead to developmental disabilities like autism or chronic illness like allergies, despite the lack of credible evidence to prove these points.
Typically, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) leads the kind of research that the AMA and the Vaccine Integrity Project are initiating. The CDC's ACIP has historically been the nexus of evidence-based vaccine policy in the U.S., but the AMA says that this “system has now effectively collapsed.”
Public health groups and leading medical organizations have consistently and repeatedly criticized the CDC and ACIP under Secretary Kennedy, including for the December 2025 decision to cut back the number of routine recommended vaccines for kids to protect against 11 diseases instead of 17. HHS actions taken by Secretary Kennedy and others have prompted external groups—such as the AAP, AMA, and PHA—to push back and sometimes step into the role CDC once played in offering Americans science-based vaccine advice.
The brief filed on behalf of AAP’s lawsuit argues that the Department’s changes to the childhood vaccine schedule could make parents think that vaccines are less important or less effective than they are. They say Secretary Kennedy and officials at HHS made “these disruptive changes without considering the overwhelming science or following ACIP’s longstanding procedural safeguards” and argue that these changes “will depress vaccination rates and cause increased vaccine-preventable outbreaks, preventable hospitalizations, and unnecessary deaths.”
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. cares a lot about changing vaccine policy in the U.S. Vaccines are shots people get to stay healthy and not get diseases. Secretary Kennedy does not think they are safe and has said that vaccines can give people allergies or disabilities like autism, even though this isn't true. To change vaccine policy, Secretary Kennedy has made a lot of changes to different committees and groups working at HHS. This includes the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which makes decisions about vaccines. He has added a lot of people to ACIP who share his beliefs.
American Medical Association and Vaccine Integrity Project—The American Medical Association (AMA) is an organization that works on healthcare issues and helps doctors. They are starting a big project with the University of Minnesota’s Vaccine Integrity Project, which creates resources to give information about vaccines. This new project will do research into vaccine safety and how well vaccines work. These two organizations will bring together a big group of medical and healthcare organizations to do research and make decisions about the best way to keep people safe from diseases. They will specifically look at diseases like the flu, COVID-19, and RSV—these are things that can spread through breathing and coughing. This new project will not give out advice about how to use vaccines, but will rely on the doctors in these groups to help spread the word about what people should do to stay safe.
Usually, the work in this new project is done by ACIP. AMA says that ACIP used to be helpful and give people advice about vaccines that everyone could trust. Now, the AMA says that ACIP isn't doing that any more. A lot of organizations have decided to do work that they think the government should be doing, like we describe in the section below on the Governors Public Health Alliance.
American Academy of Pediatrics Lawsuit—The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is an organization that works on health issues that affect children. Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics sued HHS, which means it wants HHS to change something. AAP wants HHS to change its vaccine policies. Recently, 100 health organizations, professors, healthcare experts, and health policy experts sent a new official document to a court to support the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) lawsuit. During the time that Secretary Kennedy has led HHS, many organizations that work on public health have publicly said that they don't agree with the Secretary's policies. This includes the changes that ACIP has made to recommend that kids get fewer vaccines. They said these changes will lead to fewer kids getting vaccines against dangerous diseases and could hurt and even kill people.
Governors Public Health Alliance (PHA)—The Governors Public Health Alliance is a group of governors from many states who work together to make recommendations about public health. The PHA sent a letter to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. They said they were very concerned about the changes made to a system called the Core Set. Before, states had to report to the Core Set about how people with Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) were getting healthcare. This included vaccines. Now, CMS said that states don't have to report the information about vaccines. The PHA said this is bad because we need to know if kids are getting vaccines against many different diseases. They said that they will keep track of this information since the government won't do it anymore.
View past issues of Disability Policy News to learn more about AUCD's policy priorities and how you can engage in policy actions.
