Hot topic: Has supporting immunization become a political act?

Did you know that August is National Immunization Awareness Month in the U.S.?

No? Well, you could be forgiven if it’s passed you by this year.  Because few public bodies “stateside” are shouting about it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a short item about it on its website last year – but nothing this August. Neither has the CDC posted about it on X / Twitter.

Nor is there any mention of this year’s awareness month on the website of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (known as HHS), which is headed by Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has been described as a vaccine sceptic. Likewise, HHS hasn’t posted about National Immunization Awareness Month (NIAM) on X / Twitter this August either.

One public body that is giving it a push this year is the California Department of Public Health, which posted about it on social media including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X / Twitter.

It has created a short video which asks viewers if they can tell between statements which are “true” and those which are “false”.

These include: “Vaccines protect you and keep diseases from spreading to others”, and “Your immune system can handle many vaccines at the same time” (both true), and “Protection is immediate after getting a vaccine?” (It isn’t, as it takes time for your body to build protection against a virus or bacterium in response to a jab).

This is CDPH’s attempt to dispel misinformation about vaccines, which is rife online, and is depressing vaccination rates for (among others) the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.

Other state-level public health departments that have posted on X / Twitter about “NIAM” include those for New York, Maryland and Colorado (which all voted Democrat in 2024) and Ohio (which voted Republican).

Do public health officials in Democrat-controlled states feel more comfortable supporting pro-vaccine initiatives right now? If so, has posting in favour of an awareness month that’s simply designed to improve health and save lives become – to use George Orwell’s phrase – “a political act”?

It should be noted that at least two national health bodies have posted about NIAM, Medicare.gov and Healthcare.gov.

Of course, this is just an awareness month – not a national institution – and it’s only been going since 2013, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica (which also says NIAM was “established by the National Public Health Information Coalition and later coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control”).

But in a year in which measles outbreaks linked to lower uptake of the MMR vaccine have occurred in 38 U.S. states – most notably Texas, which has seen more than 700 confirmed cases – you might have thought it’d be given a bit more of a push.