The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) is collecting stories from members to share directly with lawmakers. Your experiences with vaccines, including the successes you witness, the challenges you face, and the vital role immunizations play in protecting patients, will strengthen AAFP’s advocacy and help shape policies that support family medicine and safeguard public health.
- Dismissing all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) – the expert panel responsible for developing national vaccine recommendations.
- Terminating over $500 million in federal funding for 22 mRNA vaccine development projects managed by BARDA, including promising work on vaccines for COVID-19, influenza, and RSV.
- Firing the Senate-confirmed CDC director who pushed back on problematic directives.
- Unilaterally altering vaccine guidance creating widespread confusion among clinicians and patients.
Vaccines save lives. Between 1994 and 2023, routine childhood immunizations prevented approximately 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations, and more than 1.1 million deaths. These efforts saved the U.S. healthcare system an estimated $540 billion in direct medical costs and $2.7 trillion in societal costs.
The AAFP stands firmly for universal access to immunizations, regardless of socioeconomic or insurance status, and strongly opposes any effort to politicize or dismantle trusted public health infrastructure.
Please take a few minutes to share your story today. Together, we can ensure that voices of family physicians are heard where it matters most.