vaccines

GOP gubernatorial candidate also supports DeSantis administration’s proposed rule to drop four school vaccine mandates.

Florida's Surgeon General has called to end all vaccine mandates. Parents are confused, vaccine hesitancy is growing — and pediatricians say they are feeling the strain of tackling the mistrust. "When something as proven safe and effective and important as vaccines takes a disproportionate amount of our time and energy... it can be exhausting,” said one.

The Florida Chapter of the American College of Physicians sent notice to the Department of Health requesting a rule hearing on a proposal to make it easier for parents to opt out of vaccinating their school-aged children.

A state plan would remove mandates on schoolchildren receiving shots for chickenpox, hepatitis B, Hib and pneumococcal disease. Comments can be made through Sept. 14.

Despite a call to end all vaccine mandates in the state of Florida, nothing has happened on a policy level. Yet, parents are confused, local pediatricians are seeing vaccine hesitancy growing and vaccine exemption rates are the highest they’ve been in a decade.

Florida's attempt to expand vaccine exemptions for children is back in play after it failed to pass during the regular session that ended March 13.

After a surge of flu just after Christmas, flu numbers have chilled out. Meanwhile, flu vaccination numbers continue to drop.

South Florida pediatricians say new federal guidance limiting which children receive certain vaccines could lower immunization rates and increase the risk of disease outbreaks, especially in a region with heavy international travel.

Florida officials are plowing ahead with a proposal to roll back certain vaccine mandates for the state's schoolchildren. That is after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis called for the state to become the first in the nation to eliminate all school vaccination requirements.

At a Senate hearing on Sept. 9, 2025, on the corruption of science, witnesses presented an unpublished study that made a big assertion. I can say definitively that the study by Henry Ford Health researchers has serious design problems that keep it from revealing much about whether vaccines affect children’s long-term health.

Dr. Scott Rivkees, a pediatrician who served as surgeon general from 2019 to 2021 during the COVID pandemic, says the state is going backward when it comes to childhood vaccines.

In a Sept. 7 interview on CNN’s "State of the Union," Ladapo told host Jake Tapper that his department didn’t study how ending the vaccine requirements could affect children’s health or future outbreaks.