The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today announced the addition of five new members to the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), just days ahead of the group's next meeting.
Though the addition of new members to the vaccine advisory board has been rumored for weeks, the announcement confirms the five newly appointed members, who will join the seven members named to ACIP in June by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The new ACIP members are Catherine Stein, PhD, a professor in the Department of Population & Quantitative Health at Case Western Reserve University; Evelyn Griffin, MD, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Baton Rouge General Hospital in Louisiana; Hillary Blackburn, PharmD, MBA, director of medication access affordability with Ascension Rx in St. Louis; Kirk Milhoan, MD, PhD, a pediatric cardiologist and medical director at For Hearts and Souls Free Medical Clinic in Hawaii; and Raymond Pollak, MD, a semi-retired surgeon and transplant specialist.
"The new ACIP members bring a wealth of real-world public health experience to the job of making immunization recommendations," Jim O’Neill, deputy secretary of HHS and acting director of the CDC, said in an HHS press release.
New members include more COVID vaccine critics
The announcement of the new members continues Kennedy's efforts to remake ACIP, which develops the vaccine recommendations that are typically adopted by the CDC and are often required for health insurance coverage. In June, Kennedy fired the 17 sitting members of the group, saying a "clean sweep" was needed to restore public confidence in vaccines. He then named seven new members with comparatively little experience in immunology and vaccinology, several of whom share his anti-vaccine views.
Kennedy said the five new members will bring "diverse expertise that strengthens the committee and ensures it fulfills its mission with transparency, independence, and gold-standard science."
But, as with the first group of ACIP members named by Kennedy, some of the new members appear to align with Kennedy's views on COVID-19 vaccines and the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Milhoan is a senior fellow at the anti-mRNA Independent Medical Alliance and has claimed that COVID vaccines pose more harm than benefit, Politico reports. Stein, who has researched tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, told Ohio lawmakers that health officials in the state were inflating COVID-19 death and hospitalization numbers and has made other assertions downplaying the pandemic, according to the Ohio Capital Journal.
Griffin has expressed vaccine skepticism and testified against Louisiana's decision to add COVID-19 vaccines to the school immunization schedule, according to Medpage Today.
The HHS statement does not say whether the new members will participate in the next ACIP meeting, which will be held on September 18 and 19 at CDC headquarters in Atlanta, but an HHS spokesperson told Reuters they will be taking part. ACIP members are slated to discuss and take votes on proposed recommendations for use of the hepatitis B and the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccines on day 1 of the meeting. On day 2, they will discuss and take votes on updated COVID-19 vaccine recommendations.
Editor's note: This story was updated on September 16 at 7:30am
