February 23, 2026
Larry McCormack/Imagn Images
Newborn vaccination rates against hepatitis B have fallen since Robert Kennedy Jr. spread misinformation on 'The Joe Rogan Experience' in July 2023, research says. Kennedy has since become the head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Fewer parents were vaccinating their newborns against hepatitis B even before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed its recommendation that all babies get the immunization, new research shows.
Early immunization against the disease, which is associated with chronic liver disease and liver cancer, had been trending up between 2017 and early 2023. Newborn hepatitis B vaccination rates peaked at 83.5% in February 2023, but then fell "significantly below" expectations after July 2023, when Robert Kennedy Jr. spread misinformation about the vaccine on "The Joe Rogan Experience," a study published Monday found. By last August, vaccinations had dropped to 73.2%.
"The Joe Rogan Experience" has been among the most streamed podcasts for several years. Since appearing on the podcast, Kennedy has become secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
"While no single explanation can be identified, the decline coincides with a period of heightened public discourse in the US regarding childhood vaccination following the COVID-19 pandemic, including high-visibility media coverage and policy discussions that may have influenced perceptions of vaccine safety, clinician recommendations and parent decisions," the study authors wrote.
The study period spanned January 2017 to August 2025, a nearly nine-year stretch when the CDC still universally recommended the hepatitis B vaccine for newborns. That policy has changed since Kennedy assumed control of the CDC. An advisory committee voted to stop recommending the vaccine for newborns in December. The CDC pediatric vaccine schedule, updated in January, now recommends the shot for high-risk newborns only.
Kennedy misleadingly claimed on "The Joe Rogan Experience" in 2023 that hepatitis B was contracted from "sharing needles or from going to a really seasoned prostitute or from sort of compulsive homosexual behavior." The disease is spread through exposure to infected bodily fluids, including amniotic fluid, blood and saliva. It is frequently transmitted from mother to child, a fact that Kennedy elided by claiming that "every pregnant woman is tested."
He also suggested that newborn vaccination against hepatitis B is linked to autism, a widely debunked conspiracy theory that Kennedy has repeatedly pushed.
The researchers on the recent study recommended further investigation to assess whether the lower vaccination rates had led to increased hepatitis B infection risk among babies and young children. Their analysis pulled medical records from over 12 million infants born in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
The United States began recommending all newborns be vaccinated for hepatitis B in 1991. Before that, the vaccine was recommended to high-risk groups, but that policy didn't effectively stop the virus from spreading, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia says. That's because one-third of patients with acute hepatitis B were not in identifiable risk groups.
Before 1991, about 18,000 children contracted hepatitis B before turning 10. About half of them got it at birth, and many of them developed chronic infections, increasing their risk of cirrhosis, liver cancer and liver failure. Today, less than 1,000 children contract the disease each year. Fewer than 20 babies get it at birth.
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