The news: The CDC’s vaccine advisory panel voted to change its recommendation on when babies should receive their first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted 8-3 to shift its recommendation from giving all newborns a hepatitis B shot within 24 hours to advising parents to discuss the decision with their doctors, per STAT.

• For families who proceed with the vaccine, the panel recommends delaying the first dose to 2 months for infants whose mothers test negative. This does not apply to mothers who tested positive for hepatitis B during pregnancy.
• A second vote also passed, recommending that parents who vaccinate their infants for hepatitis B consider testing after the first dose to determine whether additional doses are needed. For context, the childhood immunization schedule has called for three doses, completed between birth and 18 months.

Why it matters: The CDC’s longstanding recommendation to give infants their first hepatitis B dose before leaving the hospital has been in place for multiple decades. But the current ACIP group includes several vaccine skeptics after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the previous committee. Kennedy has criticized the hepatitis B vaccine, claiming it's unnecessary for most infants, linking the birth dose to autism and other health problems without providing evidence to back those claims up.

Medical experts and associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, still support giving babies their first hepatitis B vaccine dose soon after birth.

• The birth-dose vaccine reduces perinatal transmission by roughly 70%, per new research from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, which also found that delaying the first dose provides no immune-protection benefit.
• 98% of healthy infants who receive all doses of the full vaccine series achieve full immunity to the virus, per the AAP.
• Conversely, newborns who are infected with hepatitis B at birth and infants infected in the first year of life have a 90% chance of developing chronic hepatitis B, and 25% of those who develop chronic hepatitis B will die from the disease, per AAP research.

ACIP’s recommendations need to be endorsed by the CDC director or Kennedy before officially becoming part of the federal government’s vaccination schedule. Health insurers also rely on ACIP guidance to determine which immunizations they cover, though it’s expected they’ll continue paying for routine vaccinations even if federal recommendations change.

Implications for vaccine makers: While changing CDC guidance won’t directly restrict access, it will likely heighten hesitancy and lead some on-the-fence parents to skip certain vaccines. For instance, just 5% of pro-vaccine parents have skipped or delayed a recommended shot for their kids, compared with 22% of parents who identify as somewhere between pro- and anti-vaccine, per October 2025 KFF polling.

Vaccine makers that develop products administered to children need to develop messaging that addresses the reasons parents give for bypassing routine childhood vaccines—namely, their concerns over side effects, safety, and having to get too many shots, per KFF’s survey. Companies should work with state public health agencies—some of which are now issuing their own vaccine guidance to counter changing federal recommendations—to co-develop campaigns that clearly communicate both the benefits of vaccination and the risks of foregoing it.