AMA and University of Minnesota Launch Independent Vaccine Review in Wake of CDC Panel Upheaval

The nation’s largest physician group is joining forces with an academic vaccine research center to build a new, independent system for reviewing vaccines, a striking move that underscores how deeply politics has shaken trust in the federal government’s traditional process.

On Monday, the American Medical Association and the University of Minnesota’s Vaccine Integrity Project announced they will run a parallel evidence-review effort focused initially on influenza, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccines ahead of the next respiratory virus season.

Organizers say the goal is to recreate, outside Washington, the kind of methodical, data-driven analysis that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) long provided before it was overhauled under current federal health leadership.

“We believe it is our duty as health care professionals to make sure the U.S. has a transparent, evidence-based process by which vaccine recommendations are made,” said Dr. Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, an internist who serves on the AMA’s Board of Trustees and has been a longtime liaison to the CDC advisory committee.

The new system will not issue national mandates or a formal immunization schedule. Instead, it will publish independent assessments of vaccine safety and effectiveness that states, medical societies, health systems and insurers can use to craft their own policies — potentially putting those bodies at odds with the CDC if conclusions diverge.

A new referee for vaccine evidence

The effort pairs the Chicago-based AMA with the Vaccine Integrity Project (VIP), a program housed at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) in Minneapolis. CIDRAP, led by epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, has for years provided independent analysis on pandemics, influenza and biodefense.

VIP was created in 2025 with philanthropic funding from the Alumbra Innovations Foundation to “safeguard vaccine use in the U.S.” and keep policy grounded in “the best available science, free from external influence,” according to its mission statement.

Under the new collaboration, teams of epidemiologists, infectious-disease specialists and evidence-review experts will compile and grade data from clinical trials, real-world effectiveness studies and safety surveillance systems. The reviews will evaluate how well vaccines prevent severe illness, hospitalization and death, and will examine rare but serious side effects.

The project will initially focus on respiratory vaccines for adults and children, including updated COVID-19 shots, seasonal flu vaccines and newly licensed RSV products. VIP is also examining evidence around the hepatitis B “birth dose” given to newborns and the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine — areas where recent federal advisory decisions have drawn concern from mainstream medical groups.

Osterholm said the AMA partnership is intended to fill what he called “a huge black hole in public health and medical practice” after sweeping changes to the federal vaccine system.

“Everything that has been done since the new ACIP has all been about ideology and not based on science,” he said, referring to the CDC advisory panel by its acronym.

AMA and VIP officials say they plan to make their methods and membership lists public and to invite major professional societies, state health officials and health systems to help interpret the evidence. They have not yet detailed whether deliberations will be livestreamed, as ACIP meetings historically were.

Fallout from an overhauled CDC vaccine panel

For decades, ACIP served as the country’s central clearinghouse for vaccine science, holding public meetings where outside experts weighed clinical trial data, disease trends and economic analyses before voting on which shots should be recommended for children and adults. Its guidance shaped everything from school-entry requirements to which vaccines insurers are required to cover without cost-sharing.

That process came under dramatic strain last year.

In June 2025, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed all 17 sitting ACIP members and replaced them with a new slate that included several figures who have questioned mainstream vaccine science. HHS also barred a number of longstanding partners — including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Infectious Diseases Society of America — from serving on ACIP work groups that had traditionally done much of the technical evidence review.

Then, in January, acting CDC Director Jim O’Neill approved sweeping revisions to the recommended childhood immunization schedule, bypassing the kind of extended public deliberation that previously accompanied such changes. The new schedule dropped broad recommendations for routine influenza, rotavirus, hepatitis A and some meningococcal vaccines in healthy children, shifting them to targeted or “shared clinical decision-making” categories. A separate ACIP vote eliminated the long-standing recommendation for universal hepatitis B vaccination at birth.

Kennedy and his allies argue the changes bring the U.S. more in line with peer nations and respond to public concerns about the number of shots given in early childhood, while preserving insurance coverage for all licensed vaccines. In public remarks, officials have called for more “gold standard” placebo-controlled trials and questioned whether earlier policies added too many vaccines too quickly.

Many medical and public health organizations see it differently. The American Academy of Pediatrics last month publicly reaffirmed its support for the prior schedule, which recommended immunization against 18 diseases in childhood, saying the rollbacks would “increase the risk that children will suffer and die from vaccine-preventable illnesses.” Several physician groups have filed lawsuits seeking to block the new schedule, alleging the process was rushed and lacked scientific rigor.

An October article in The New England Journal of Medicine and subsequent editorials in other journals warned that federal vaccine guidance was being “politically distorted” and urged the creation of independent, nongovernmental evidence-review bodies to protect scientific standards.

Against that backdrop, the AMA’s move is a significant break from its traditional approach of working inside federal structures.

“This is a really important foray for the AMA,” said Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, an infectious-disease physician and chief executive of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “It shows the considerable concern around where we are going with evidence-based recommendations.”

Federal officials push back

The Department of Health and Human Services rejected the suggestion that the federal advisory system has failed.

“The claim that ACIP’s evidence-based process has collapsed is categorically false,” HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a statement. He added that outside organizations “confuse the American people” and “do not replace or supersede the federal process that guides vaccine policy in the United States.”

CDC recommendations, he said, continue to be developed “using the best available science” and in coordination with other federal health agencies.

Public trust in those institutions, however, has eroded. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last week found that fewer than half of Americans say they trust the CDC for vaccine information even “a fair amount,” the lowest level recorded since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The drop was particularly sharp among Democrats and independents, groups that historically expressed higher confidence in the agency.

By contrast, surveys consistently show that many people place more trust in their personal physicians and professional groups such as the AMA than in federal agencies.

Fragmented guidance ahead

The emergence of a parallel evidence-review system raises the prospect that different parts of the country may begin to follow different vaccine playbooks.

Several Democratic-leaning states have already signaled they will not scale back school-entry requirements solely on the basis of the revised CDC schedule. In those jurisdictions, AMA–VIP reviews could provide an independent scientific rationale for maintaining broader vaccine mandates and public funding.

Other states are expected to adhere closely to the new federal guidance, potentially resulting in lower uptake of vaccines that have moved from routine to optional categories. Over time, experts say, that could contribute to wider disparities in rates of illnesses such as hepatitis B, influenza and HPV-related cancers.

The AMA–VIP assessments will not carry the force of law. But hospital systems, insurers and specialty societies could cite them when deciding which vaccines to stock, cover or recommend, giving the new initiative considerable practical influence.

“This is about restoring a deliberative, evidence-driven approach to vaccines,” Fryhofer said. “Clinicians and patients need to know that recommendations are coming from a transparent review of the data, not from political pressure.”

A new model for public health authority

The collaboration also highlights a broader shift in who is doing the work of evaluating scientific evidence for public policy.

For decades, core functions such as vaccine benefit-risk assessment were concentrated in federal agencies. Now, a university-based center funded by private philanthropy and backed by a professional association is poised to shoulder part of that burden.

Supporters say that diversification makes the system more resilient if any one institution is compromised. Critics worry it will further fragment an already polarized information landscape, leaving patients and parents to navigate conflicting advice from Washington, medical societies and state officials.

There is little precedent for what comes next. During the COVID-19 pandemic, professional societies sometimes issued their own clinical practice guidelines when they believed federal advice was slow to adapt. But this is the first time the AMA has formally aligned itself with a standing, systematic alternative to the CDC’s vaccine advisory machinery.

As the next respiratory virus season approaches, front-line clinicians may be among the first to feel the shift. A pediatrician or family doctor weighing whether to recommend a flu shot or COVID-19 booster will be able to turn not only to the official CDC schedule but also to a new set of charts, tables and risk estimates produced in Minnesota and endorsed by the nation’s leading physician organization.

For patients, the question may become not just which vaccines to accept, but which referee — federal agencies or an emerging network of independent reviewers — they and their doctors choose to trust.