Updated Feb. 18, 2026, 5:42 p.m. PT
I have spent more than a decade practicing emergency medicine, balancing my time between a high-volume adult trauma center and a pediatric ER here in Reno. In that time, I have come to deeply appreciate the days in a pediatric emergency department where my team and I are not forced to perform invasive life-saving procedures on children for diseases we know how to prevent.
As a physician and a father of two small children, I am profoundly frustrated and alarmed by the recent changes to the federal childhood vaccine schedule. The decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to remove six universally recommended childhood vaccines represents a dangerous departure from evidence-based medicine. This decision opens the door for significant increases in dangerous viruses and bacterial afflictions such as Rotavirus and Neisseria meningitidis. By shifting critical protections to a “by-request” status, we are dismantling the very infrastructure that has kept our children safe for generations.
I want to be clear that I am not interested in partisan bickering. In fact, I find common ground with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on several fronts. His focus on “Making America Healthy Again” by tackling metabolic syndrome, removing ultra-processed foods from schools and emphasizing exercise is a vision I wholeheartedly support. As an emergency physician, I see the devastating long-term effects of poor diet every day. We should absolutely be collaborating to fix our broken food systems. However, you cannot build a healthy nation by inviting back preventable infectious diseases. On the issue of immunizations, the secretary is simply wrong, and the ramifications of this error will be felt in every community throughout the country.
Before the rotavirus vaccine became a staple of the universal schedule in 2006, winter and spring in the ER saw a significant “rotavirus season.” It was a predictable, exhausting cycle of infants arriving severely dehydrated from relentless vomiting and diarrhea. Nationally, rotavirus was responsible for up to 70,000 hospitalizations annually in the U.S.
The change after the vaccine’s introduction was dramatic. We saw a nearly 90% drop in rotavirus-related hospitalizations. In my decade of practice, the sight of a ward filled with rotavirus infected infants on IV fluids for preventable gastroenteritis has become a relic of the past. The Decision Memo recently released by the Department of Health and Human Services notes that rotavirus “can cause hospitalization for gastroenteritis, but the virus poses almost no risk of either mortality or chronic morbidity.” The parents of infants who endure such hospitalizations, exhausted from caring for their sick child and watching as IV fluids are administered by needle in a tiny arm might not have such a cavalier attitude towards rotavirus infection and would undoubtedly have chosen to prevent the entire experience if possible.
Similarly, the impact of the Neisseria meningitidis (meningococcal) vaccine has fundamentally changed emergency care. This bacterium causes a form of meningitis that can progress from flu-like symptoms to limb amputation or death in less than 24 hours. Since the vaccine was implemented in 2005, the incidence of meningococcal disease has declined by over 90% in target age groups. In the ER today, the statistical likelihood of a fever being a life-altering case of Neisseria has plummeted because of high vaccination rates. Stripping this from the universal schedule ignores the reality that for this disease, prevention is the only reliable cure.
To my Northern Nevada community: I know these policy shifts can feel confusing and overwhelming. Please know that your local doctors and nurses remain your fiercest advocates. Our commitment to your children’s safety is unchanged. I encourage you to talk openly with your pediatricians, ask the hard questions, but please trust the decades of data that show these vaccines are one of the safest, most effective tools we have to keep our kids out of the hospital. Northern Nevada is a resilient community, and by sticking to the science, we can ensure our children grow up healthy, active, and protected.
Dr. David Benaron is an emergency medicine physician at Renown Health and serves as faculty in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine.