In another move away from federal health agencies under President Donald Trump (R), the Moore administration wants to authorize the state’s health secretary to recommend vaccine schedules for Marylanders.
Health Secretary Meena Seshamani said legislation that would grant her that authority is a direct response to “the endless changes at the federal level around vaccine policy,” including recent changes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surrounding childhood vaccinations.
“Vaccines remain one of the most powerful public health tools that we have to keep ourselves, our families and our communities healthy and safe from disease,” she told reporters in a virtual briefing Wednesday. “Now more than ever, with the swirl of uncertainty at the federal level, evidence-based data will continue to be our North Star.”
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump (R) issued a memorandum tasking U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the CDC to reevaluate childhood vaccines based off “best practices from peer, developed countries.”
The CDC then announced it was reducing the number of vaccinations recommended for all children.
Now, vaccinations protecting children against rotavirus, influenza, COVID-19 and hepatitis A and B are recommended only for those with severe health complications, or after consultation with a health care provider, rather than being broadly recommended for all children, as they had been.
Since Trump took office for his second term, various agencies in his administration have bucked decades of vaccination recommendations supported by top medical organizations and a majority of scientific research. That has led to public confusion over vaccine safety and best practices, say advocates and Maryland Health Department officials.
“As a pediatrician, the most important thing for me,” MDH Deputy Secretary of Public Health Meg Sullivan said, “is that parents have all of the information they need and have all of their questions answered.
“I do think right now that parents out there are confused. We are really committed to trying to provide clear recommendations for parents at the state level,” she said.
In the 2025 session, the General Assembly passed House Bill 1315, which locked in vaccine recommendations that were issued under the Biden administration. That law ensures that health insurers operating in the state continued to cover vaccines as recommended from that year regardless of federal guidance under the next administration.
The new legislation, referred to as the Vax Act of 2026, would allow the Maryland health secretary to issue vaccine recommendations without being tied to a federal agency, though the secretary would be able to consider federal guidance when issuing recommendations.
“Where the statute currently is, it says that insurance providers have to cover vaccines as of what the Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices recommended on Dec. 31, 2024,” Seshamani said. “So it was frozen in time.
“What this legislation would do, it would enable there to be a more dynamic determination of what are the recommended vaccines that insurance providers have to cover,” she said.
The bill is stil being drafted, according to state officials.
The Moore administration has already taken steps to preserve vaccine recommendations from a pre-Trump era.
In addition to HB 1315, lawmakers also approved legislation that expanded authority for pharmacists to administer vaccinations without a prescription. And in November, Gov. Wes Moore (D) announced a new program to help uninsured and underinsured individuals get access to vaccines at local health departments in certain counties.
Maryland also joined the Northeast Public Health Collaborative, a coalition of states opposing the Trump administration’s approach to vaccine recommendations, but issuing their own vaccine recommendations based on guidance from medical societies such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians.
The Vax Act would prompt the health secretary to turn to those organizations for vaccine recommendations, while considering the guidance of federal agencies and entities as “elective,” according to a press release on the proposed legislation.
“The federal government has traditionally been a place for trusted information. I think that in the current environment, states are stepping up,” Seshamani said. “We are continuing to look at the guidelines from leading medical organization that have been using decades of science to help guide their recommendations.”