Since assuming his position in January, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., United States secretary of health and human services, has delivered mixed commentary on vaccines to the public. When asked if he would vaccinate his own children against measles during a May 14 hearing with the House Committee on Appropriations, he advised Americans against taking his medical advice. Kennedy also recently removed the COVID-19 vaccine from the Centers for Disease Control’s recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and pregnant women.
According to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, as of June 6 there have been 10 confirmed cases of measles, including four outbreak cases, in the state of Michigan since the start of 2025. These cases mark the first confirmed measles outbreaks in the state since 2019. A 2024 MDHHS study revealed only 70.2% of children between 19 and 36 months of age in Michigan had completed all doses of the recommended vaccine series — significantly lower than the 95% threshold necessary to maintain herd immunity — creating low-vaccination pockets which are susceptible to outbreaks of infectious diseases like measles.
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Emily Stoneman, clinical associate professor of internal medicine, said messaging from public health officials is important to grow trust and influence public perception to combat vaccine hesitancy.
“I think it’s really important for our health officials to provide clear, consistent messaging that vaccines are safe and effective and they save lives,” Stoneman said. “Unfortunately, we have not been getting that from our current leadership. Vaccines are really the only effective way to prevent and stop these outbreaks that we’re seeing.”
In an interview with The Daily, professor of epidemiology Matthew Boulton, senior associate dean for global public health, said the 20th century saw the development of numerous vaccines and immunization policies which have resulted in most preventable diseases dropping by more than 90% in the United States.
“(Vaccines have) had a profound impact on health generally, especially amongst infants and young children because, at the turn of the 20th century, there was a very high probability for children contracting and then dying from vaccine preventable diseases, and we’ve been able to largely overcome that with universal vaccination programs,” Boulton said. “Unfortunately, what we’re seeing now in contemporary situations is higher levels of vaccine hesitancy.”
Boulton said a reason people tend to discount how serious diseases like measles are is because they have never experienced them before.
“Paradoxically, one of the challenges is that public health has been so successful with controlling vaccine-preventable diseases that a lot of people have never encountered them before,” Boulton said. “And so there’s a natural tendency to discount how serious they are because they’ve never seen them before. I mean, most people have never seen a measles case before, but that’s because public health was so successful.”
In June 2024, the MDHHS announced Michigan’s childhood vaccine rates were at a historic low, with the number of middle and elementary schools with vaccination rates below 70% increasing by 85 schools total from 2015 to 2023. Boulton said he believes both the COVID-19 pandemic and politics have influenced rising rates of vaccine hesitancy in the United States over the past few years.
“The vaccine hesitancy is not new — we certainly had seen vaccine hesitancy prior to the pandemic,” Boulton said. “I think what changed is it became heavily politicized during that time by the administration, and I think that drove higher levels of vaccine hesitancy. And I do feel there’s been a spillover effect from that now affecting other vaccines.”
In an interview with The Daily, LSA rising senior Anika Deshpande, internal vice president of CURIS – Public Health Advocacy, said she thinks the lack of efforts to effectively address vaccine concerns has exacerbated the issue, using COVID-19 as an example.
“I think a lot of the problems that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic were not supplemented with education for providers, in terms of how to go about those conversations,” Deshpande said. “And so I’ve witnessed a, ‘Okay, it looks like this is something that is really sensitive for you, we’re just not going to talk about it.’ Whereas, I think in order to actually incite change, those conversations need to be had between physicians, nurses, whatever healthcare provider and their patients instead of completely avoiding the conversation.”
Deshpande said she believes conversations regarding vaccines need to occur with understanding, not winning, in mind.
“I think framing the conversation as saying ‘How can we bridge the gap between worldviews using things like clear communication and accessible language?’ instead of saying ‘How are we convincing the other side of our argument?’ can really help shift how we approach conversations like that,” Deshpande said.
Stoneman said it is important to handle vaccine concerns on an individual level with patients, rather than attempt to provide broad reassurance.
“When people resist vaccination, I think we tend to lump them all together right into one category,” Stoneman said. “But if you look at it, people have a lot of different reasons for why they may choose not to get vaccinated or may choose not to have their children get vaccinated. So I think really having the public health messaging, but also having individual conversations with our patients about ‘This is why vaccines are important.’”
Daily Staff Reporter Aanya Panyadahundi can be contacted at aanyatp@umich.edu.
