WASHINGTON—U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is preparing a broad federal initiative to strengthen the investigation and monitoring of potential adverse effects associated with vaccines.
According to people familiar with the project, the strategy
includes the creation of a new research clinic at the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) to study and treat patients who report health problems they
believe are related to a vaccine. Kennedy recently visited the NIH campus in
Bethesda, Maryland, where the new initiative was presented.
Another component of the plan would be to establish a
mechanism to reimburse physicians for time spent reporting potential serious
vaccine side effects, with the goal of improving data collection on these
events.
Kennedy had previously indicated the need to strengthen the
U.S. system for monitoring adverse events. Among the measures proposed by the
Department of Health is the modernization of the Vaccine Adverse Event
Reporting System (VAERS) to facilitate the collection and analysis of reports.
The new clinic would also have a research purpose: the data
obtained from patients could be used to analyze the frequency, characteristics,
and possible factors associated with reported events, as well as to inform
future decisions regarding vaccination recommendations.