Colorado lawmakers are quietly trying to RFK Jr.-proof school vaccination requirements

Colorado lawmakers have quietly moved to shift the state’s school immunization requirements away from the recommendations of a prominent federal committee, in response to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. taking over the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The move comes in an amendment to a bill, House Bill 1027, currently awaiting Gov. Jared Polis’ signature. The amendment makes a change to how Colorado decides which vaccines to require.

Colorado’s Board of Health sets the rules for which vaccines schoolkids need to receive or to have a valid exemption for. The current law says the board should do that “based on recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the federal Department of Health and Human Services.”

The committee, known as ACIP, plays a major role in reviewing safety and efficacy data on vaccines and deciding whether to recommend their use. Historically, the committee has been composed of doctors who broadly support vaccination, including a few from Colorado.

But the committee’s future is less certain with Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, at the helm of HHS. An ACIP meeting originally scheduled for February was postponed for two months before being rescheduled for next week. And Kennedy has attacked ACIP’s members, claiming they are hobbled by conflicts of interest. (The committee has conflict-disclosure and recusal rules.)

This has led to concerns that Kennedy may seek to tilt the committee in an anti-vaccine direction and may revoke prior ACIP recommendations.

Against that backdrop — though he didn’t mention Kennedy specifically — state Sen. Kyle Mullica, D-Thornton, proposed an amendment to House Bill 1027 that would lessen the state Board of Health’s reliance on ACIP for vaccine rules. Mullica, in his day job, works as an emergency room nurse.

The bill is a catch-all of changes to Colorado’s disease control laws. Among its other provisions, the bill would repeal a committee that gives advice to the governor during pandemics, it would extend the amount of time families have to come into compliance with school immunization requirements and it would tweak testing standards for hepatitis C.

If Polis signs the amended bill, the law would now state that the Board of Health should adopt immunization rules “taking into consideration” ACIP recommendations, as well as recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American College of Physicians.

Mullica, in introducing the amendment during a Senate committee hearing last month, said the goal is to “make sure that we’re trying to take the politics out of what those recommendations are for the immunization schedule.”

“It really stabilizes what our immunization schedule is going to be to make sure our kids are protected and our communities are protected,” Mullica said during a later debate on the Senate floor.

The bill passed both chambers on largely party-line votes, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed.