US EditionU.S. Newborn Hepatitis B Vaccination Rates Decline Before CDC Policy Change
Rates fell from 83.5% to 73.2% between 2023 and 2025, declining months before the CDC ended its universal birth-dose hepatitis B vaccine recommendation.
- Through August 2025, researchers found birth-dose hepatitis B rates rose from 67.5% in January 2017 to 83.5% in February 2023 before falling to 73.2%, using Epic Cosmos data on more than 12 million infants.
- Investigators traced the timing to July 2023, when rates diverged amid heightened public discussion and a widely circulated podcast episode mentioning hepatitis B, before ACIP voted in December 2025 to end the universal birth-dose recommendation and the CDC removed hepatitis B the following month.
- Using an ARIMA model, researchers found monthly vaccination rates fell below forecasts starting in July 2023.
- Authors cautioned that policy shifts may further influence vaccination trends and noted Epic Cosmos database’s incomplete coverage could obscure affected populations.
- He warned, `'Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, where previously there was concern about messaging around the COVID-19 vaccine, we started to observe that shift into other childhood vaccines,'` and noted, `'The paper demonstrates that the rates were on the decline even before these recommendations had come out and these guidelines had changed, and so it's possible that those rates are going to continue to go down,'` Rothman said.
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Hepatitis B vaccine rates are dropping
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