Vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears poised to become the country’s next health secretary, a nomination that’s concerned health officials in Maine and nationally.
It could also be a victory for a growing anti-vaccination movement. But Maine’s largest advocacy group for vaccine choice said Tuesday that its members are only cautiously optimistic Kennedy will support their goals, and that the outcome won’t significantly affect their plans to keep fighting the state’s vaccination laws.
After a committee of federal lawmakers advanced Kennedy’s nomination Tuesday, the Senate will need to vote in his favor for him to get the role. While a date hasn’t been set yet, it’s likely he will be confirmed, according to the Associated Press.
His skepticism and misleading claims around vaccine efficacy and safety — along with some of his other views on the medical system — have alienated public health officials, parts of the general public and some lawmakers during his confirmation hearings.
“Despite his statements about making America healthy, Robert Kennedy Jr.’s spread of vaccine misinformation, lack of understanding about how Medicare and Medicaid work, and general inability to apply science to policy are deeply concerning,” Rebecca Boulous, executive director of the Maine Public Health Association, said Tuesday. “Thousands of public health professionals across the country, including here in Maine, oppose his nomination.”
But these positions have also earned praise from vaccine skeptics and anti-vaccination advocates.
In Maine, activists say their top priority is having the choice of whether to vaccinate their kids, a “parents rights” framing similar to one playing out over school policies for LGBTQ+ students and the content of learning materials.
More than 6,200 families statewide have joined Health Choice Maine since it branched off from a similar group in 2019, executive director Tiffany Kreck said. As likely the state’s largest group of its kind, it grew in opposition to a Maine law ending nonmedical exemptions for school vaccination requirements.
Since then, Health Choice Maine members have been building a legal case against the law in an effort to overturn it, with the goal of challenging it in court later this year, according to Kreck.
The group formed a legal team in 2021 that previously sued Maine over vaccination requirements for health care workers and later for emergency medical workers, which she said were preparation for the case it’s building now.
“We would have been doing this with or without Kennedy’s involvement,” she said. “I am hoping that if he is confirmed, it will lead to more public discourse, because in my opinion that can only help our efforts.”
Generally speaking, Kreck has found that her group gets more participation when public discussions are happening around vaccine choice. She argued that more debate and discussion around vaccination choices would make people less likely to become skeptics, since it would help them feel free to ask questions.
Though vaccine resistance became highly visible during the pandemic, it’s not new in Maine. A 2011 study commissioned by several state health agencies found an increasing number of Mainers weren’t fully vaccinating their kids for various reasons, including beliefs the shots were unnecessary, ineffective or untrustworthy.
Kennedy is probably the ideal candidate for their movement, Kreck said, though she would have preferred someone with a medical background. Members like that he is not involved with the pharmaceutical industry.
Regardless, her group is skeptical he will be able to make significant changes, and members are wary of any expansion to federal power.
Health officials, meanwhile, fear Kennedy’s confirmation could lead to a resurgence of diseases such as measles and whooping cough.
Boulos, the state’s public health association director, said putting him at the helm would “do serious harm to millions of Americans,” especially as public health datasets and health communication is being restricted federally.
