The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended Tuesday that children between 6 months and 23 months old receive the vaccine to protect them against serious illness caused by the virus.
Kids under the age of 2 are especially vulnerable to severe COVID-19, the group said, and should be prioritized for vaccination unless they have an allergy to the jab or its ingredients.
In May, Kennedy announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would no longer recommend routine COVID-19 shots for healthy children due to a lack of clinical data justifying the need for annual vaccinations against the virus.
But the CDC did not follow Kennedy's guidance to the letter, instead recommending that parents take part in a "shared decision making" process with health care providers to determine if their child needs the shot.
The AAP and HHS have been at odds for months, and tensions reached a head when Kennedy dismissed all the members of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced them with his own handpicked representatives, including some outright vaccine skeptics.
Since it was founded in 1930, the AAP has published evidence-based vaccine guidance to support pediatricians. But it has not traditionally differed substantially from federal recommendations.
The move to publish COVID recommendations that break from HHS reflects a new effort by medical societies and expert advocacy groups to bypass Kennedy and what they say are his efforts to upend the nation's vaccine system.
With vaccine skeptics in charge of U.S. health care, these groups say they want to give Americans — especially parents — as much information as possible to protect children from disease.
At the same time AAP's recommendations were released, a group of epidemiologists and infectious diseases experts called the Vaccine Integrity Project held essentially their own version of an ACIP meeting to review evidence on the safety and efficacy for flu, COVID and RSV shots.
Members of the initiative said ACIP usually reviews guidelines for respiratory virus vaccines during the summer, but has not appeared to have done it this year. In its absence, the initiative was stepping in.
The panel concluded there was no change in safety signals or sudden drop in efficacy on any of the vaccines reviewed.
"There is no scientific evidence to support the changes HHS made to COVID recommendations for pregnant women or for children most at risk for high-risk transmission of severe disease," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who is leading the initiative.
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