Key Highlights
- FALLON/AFP/ hide caption toggle caption PATRICK T.
- FALLON/AFP/ In a major change in vaccine policy, the Trump administration recently dropped recommendations that all kids get six immunizations long considered routine.
- Instead, they're now in a category called "shared clinical decision-making." That's when the patient (or the parents if the patient's a child) has a conversation with a health care provider to decide if a treatment is appropriate, says Wendy Parmet, who studies health care policy at Northeastern University in Boston.
- "In theory, shared clinical decision-making sounds great," she says.
- But the approach is usually reserved for complicated medical decisions where the answer is often muddy, not for routine vaccines that have been clearly shown to be safe and effective.
