HealthHIV Provides Oral Comments to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) on September 18, 2025
The following oral comments were presented by HealthHIV’s Director of Advocacy, Scott Bertani, to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) on September 18, 2025, and concluded with three recommendations for ACIPs continued vital work in protecting the health of the American people.
I’m Scott Bertani, Director of Advocacy at HealthHIV, a national nonprofit strengthening health systems through education, training, research, and advocacy. We work for people impacted by HIV, hepatitis, mpox, STIs, sickle cell, and related health-equity challenges.
And I’m grateful to address this newly reconstituted committee as it considers decisions shaping public health for decades. In this transition, your role carries a profound responsibility: to uphold ACIP’s legacy as an independent, science-driven safeguard for the nation’s health. The agenda before you reflects that weight.
Today you deliberate on MMRV and hepatitis B vaccines that greatly advanced public health. Among them, the Hep B birth dose is a clear example—protecting infants from infections at delivery that could become lifelong in over 90% of cases, while timely routinization lowers risk into adulthood. The safety and efficacy applies to combination vaccines, like MMRV.
But even as you revisit long-established successes, the burden of preventable vaccine disease is compounded by growing chronic conditions. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, kidney and liver disease, and Alzheimer’s now define the leading causes of death. These morbidities fall heavily on immuno-compromised and People living with HIV. Vaccines may be on the docket, but the frame widens to include chronic disease; and without strong uptake, people already facing barriers to care and cost, and aging populations remain at risk of spillover threats, like COVID, shingles and RSV.
That’s why your work this week carries generational weight. ACIP’s recommendations determine guidance, insurance coverage, pharmacy access, and state law. When recommendations and scientific equity weaken, patients lose access, providers lose clarity, supply becomes problematic, and stigma and confusion spreads across clinics, pharmacies, and schools.
We urge you to: one, uphold the committee’s evidence-based and evidence-to-recommendation process; two, keep the full immunization schedule—as published in the MMWR—and three, reinstate universal COVID-19 vaccination for everyone 6 months and older, to protect those at risk, their parents, grandparents, and caregivers—recognizing that VAERS is a signal detector, and the Vaccine Safety Datalink confirms what’s real. Please preserve our future. Thank you.
About HealthHIV
HealthHIV is a national non-profit working with organizations, communities, and health care providers to advance effective prevention, care, and support for people living with, or at risk for, HIV and HCV through education and training, technical assistance and capacity building, advocacy, and health services research and evaluation. HealthHIV leads the HealthHCV initiative, the National Center for Health Care Capacity Building, and the National Coalition for LGBTQ Health. Visit HealthHIV.org for more information.