Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is launching a federal initiative focused on people who report serious health problems following vaccination, including a new research and treatment clinic at the National Institutes of Health.
Kennedy made his first visit to the NIH campus as HHS secretary earlier this week, where he met with patients who reported vaccine injuries and attended a ribbon-cutting for the new clinic. He was accompanied by CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, CDC Director Erica Schwartz and acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas.
NIH had outlined the initiative in two June documents calling for improved data collection and analysis, along with a vaccine-injury research program at the NIH Clinical Center that could eventually expand to medical centers around the country. The documents call for large-scale evaluations of vaccines and their relationship to positive and negative long-term health outcomes across the lifespan.
The initiative also includes plans for a new medical billing code that would allow doctors to receive reimbursement for time spent reporting suspected serious vaccine side effects. A separate proposal from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences calls for research into aluminum and aluminum-containing compounds, with vaccine research potentially included in that work. Federal officials are also examining changes to the government’s systems for reporting and compensating vaccine injuries.
