Two members of Congress have called on federal officials to address what they described as “a growing and preventable public health crisis” of families refusing the long-standard vitamin K shot for their newborns, which has led to some of those babies suffering uncontrollable bleeding and even dying.
“We write to urge the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to take immediate action,” two Democrats, Rep. Kim Schrier, from Washington, and Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, from Maryland, wrote in a letter last week to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who is acting as director of the CDC.
The letter followed a ProPublica investigation that found babies were dying after families refused the vitamin K shot, a critical and inexpensive injection given at birth to help the blood clot, and that federal and state agencies were not tracking vital data.
“Recent reporting from ProPublica has highlighted a major problem: the federal government does not currently track vitamin K shot refusal, vitamin K deficiency bleeding, or the preventable deaths related to vitamin K deficiency,” Schrier and Alsobrooks wrote in the letter.
The vitamin K shot has been routine in the U.S. since the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended it for all newborns in 1961, but some families in recent years have declined the shot — which is not a vaccine — amid a rising mistrust of medical institutions and false information online.
No federal or state agencies track refusal rates or subsequent bleeding.
“It was ProPublica’s reporting that gave us this additional information and led to us writing this important letter, and asking, of course, that CDC take action,” Alsobrooks said in an interview.
She called on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to publicly voice his support for the shot. He has previously refused to do so and instead stated that he has never said anything about the injection.
“There are so many who are hanging on the word and advice of a person in his position,” said Alsobrooks, who has called for Kennedy’s resignation. “I think he has a moral obligation to state in clear and no uncertain terms that this is safe and effective, and that families should be giving this shot to their babies.”
An HHS spokesperson, reiterating a previous comment, said that the CDC recommends that parents allow newborns to get the vitamin K shot within six hours of their birth to prevent vitamin K deficiency bleeding. She also said that uptake of the shot has declined in recent years “as public trust in health care institutions has fallen, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic amid heavy-handed mandates and inconsistent messaging during the Biden administration.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics applauded the lawmakers and ProPublica for bringing attention to the issue, which Dr. Andrew Racine, AAP’s president, said the organization has been concerned about for some time.
One function of government, he said, is to provide clinicians and the public with data that will allow them to make informed decisions. If a sick baby comes into a hospital, doctors should know if they are in an area with a high vitamin K refusal rate so they can quickly diagnose and treat them. He likened it to tracking measles cases.
“We depend upon the CDC to let us know about that,” Racine said. “And this is essentially a medical condition that is affecting newborn babies that pediatricians or people who look after children need to be aware of.”
He said, too, that HHS leadership should be vocal in their support for the shot and in communicating what could happen if a baby who did not receive the shot starts bleeding.
“It’s not simply to track it,” Racine said. “It’s to message it.”
Research shows babies who don’t get the vitamin K shot are 81 times more likely than those who do to develop late vitamin K deficiency bleeding, which can lead to bleeding in the brain. According to the CDC, 1 in every 5 babies with vitamin K deficiency bleeding will die.
A national study of more than 5 million births found a rise in the rate of babies not receiving vitamin K at birth, which topped 5% in 2024. Some hospitals have told ProPublica that their refusal rates have more than doubled in recent years.
Schrier and Alsobrooks wrote in their letter that historically there wasn’t a need for robust monitoring systems to track cases of vitamin K deficiency bleeding. But now, without a solid understanding of the scope, experts can’t determine the extent of the problem or develop a public health campaign. The CDC, they wrote, has the tools needed to understand and address the crisis and should use them.
“I believe that the best way to set the record straight for parents is to be able to provide modern-day, accurate information,” Schrier said. “Once you stop doing these things that are preventative, cases rise.”
