The news: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reviving a children’s vaccine task force after pressure from anti-vaccine advocates. The reinstated Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines will be led by NIH director Jay Bhattacharya and include FDA and CDC senior officials.

Digging into the details: Kennedy reopened the task force on Thursday. He was sued in May by the Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group he founded in 2007 and served as chairman until 2023, for failing to restart it.

• The original task force launched in 1986 created by Congress to oversee the safety and quality of childhood vaccines and closed in 1998.
• The new Bhattacharya-led task force is focused on developing, promoting, and refining childhood vaccines with “fewer and less serious adverse reactions” than current vaccines, per HHS.
• Its first report will come out in two years and update every two years after.

Zooming out: The task force is the latest move by Kennedy to establish new vaccine oversight.

• In May, Kennedy changed the CDC’s list of recommended immunizations, removing the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy pregnant women and healthy children.
• In June, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and installed 8 handpicked members that included several vaccine skeptics.
• Earlier this month, Kennedy cancelled $500 million in mRNA vaccine research grants, including flu, COVID-19, and pandemic preparedness work.