After years of anti-vaccine advocacy, RFK Jr. said vaccines protect children. But experts say he must go further amid measles outbreak.

Vaccines protect children from the measles, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says in a Fox News op-ed responding to concern about the highly infectious disease whose recent resurgence is making nationwide headlines.

But Kennedy has an obligation to forcefully and explicitly recommend vaccination, say experts at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, given that he spent years spreading misinformation about vaccines, including falsely claiming that an ingredient in vaccines causes autism.

“He has an affirmative obligation to strongly recommend the vaccine and debunk misinformation about it if he wants people to be informed about their decision — since he was in the process of misinforming them,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the Annenberg director and a national expert on science communication.

Last week, the death of a school-aged child in West Texas was the nation’s first fatality from measles in a decade amid an ongoing outbreak in which 154 measles cases, most in unvaccinated people, were reported in the first few months of 2025. Meanwhile, suburban Philadelphia’s Montgomery County reported a single case over the weekend.

The measles vaccine, whose first dose is recommended at 12 months of age, is highly effective against the virus. The vast majority of U.S. children are routinely vaccinated as part of school immunization requirements, but as vaccination rates have dipped in some communities, outbreaks have become more common.

Kennedy should have directly advocated for unvaccinated people to get the measles vaccine, experts said, in the model of the more stringent calls for vaccination during measles outbreaks put out during President Donald Trump’s first term. An HHS spokesperson did not return a request for comment Tuesday.

“If you read the op-ed closely, he never encouraged strongly for people to be vaccinated. He states the very positive aspects of vaccination, but the part that’s missing is the other standard of public health messaging — an urgent call for people who are not vaccinated to go get the measles vaccine,” said Jessica McDonald, the science editor at FactCheck.org, an Annenberg program that tracks the factual accuracy of statements from U.S. politicians.

Instead, Kennedy noted that nearly every child in the United States contracted measles before vaccines were introduced in the 1960s, and that about one in 1,200 children who contracted the disease died between 1953 and 1962.

He called the decision to vaccinate “a personal one.”

Educating the public on vaccines

When a measles case is detected, local and state health officials have an opportunity to promote vaccination and combat misinformation in their own communities, Jamieson said.

“The people most likely to be influential about health decisions are people in our own community, who we trust, who have health expertise,” she said. It’s also crucial to ensure parents and kids have easy access to free vaccines, she said.

The Montgomery County measles case, detected over the weekend, occurred in a child too young to be vaccinated. Richard Lorraine, the medical director of the county’s health department, said vaccination rates are high in the county and that it’s likely the county will not see any additional cases.

He has strongly recommended that residents ensure they are up-to-date on measles vaccines and to speak with their doctors about vaccinating their children earlier if planning travel abroad or to a location where measles is spreading, like Texas.

Discussions about the choice to vaccinate should be made with accurate information and the advice of a doctor, not influenced by online misinformation, he said.

“Every practitioner I know would welcome the opportunity to discuss questions [about vaccination] with an individual or parent of a child, and that’s exactly what they should do,” Lorraine said. “They should not get their information from random sites on the internet.”

Vitamin A and measles

In his op-ed published Sunday, Kennedy also said that sanitation and nutrition improvements contributed to a decrease in measles deaths, and that good nutrition and vitamin-rich foods are “a best defense” against chronic and infectious disease. He noted that vitamin A can be used to treat measles.

But neither should be used as alternatives to vaccination, FactCheck.org’s McDonald said. Without stressing that distinction, she said, Kennedy’s statements on vitamin A and good nutrition could be interpreted as a “wink and nod” to people looking for an excuse to avoid a measles vaccine.

“An American reading that might think you don’t need to get vaccinated, because vitamin A works great,” McDonald said. “No one is arguing against nutrition. But to even suggest in an op-ed that good nutrition is the best defense — that gives people an out.”

Lorraine, a primary care physician, often recommends vitamin supplements to improve a patient’s general health. But he said it’s also important for public health officials to be specific about how vitamins work.

“We certainly do use vitamin A in treating measles to lower the risk of bad outcomes,” he said. “But it does not extrapolate to being good in terms of prevention of measles.”

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