This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.
is a political science and public policy scholar at the University of Western Australia, is professor and social scientist in the University of Sydney and is the Deputy Dean, Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney.
When it comes to the future of childhood immunisations, all eyes are on Robert F. Kennedy Jr, US Secretary of Health and Human Services, and his audacious attempt to discredit vaccinations with and dodgy 鈥渟cience鈥�.
But state governments have their own weapons to destroy vaccine uptake in line with the (make America healthy again) agenda. Children in the United States are against a range of infectious diseases, including measles, to attend school and kindergarten. recently the state will scrap all vaccine mandates for children attending school, describing them as 鈥渟lavery鈥�.
With strong support from the to abolish vaccine mandates, and with the Florida State Senate and House of Representatives both controlled by Republicans, the measure is likely to proceed.
Why mandate vaccines?
High vaccination coverage rates protect individuals directly. They can also protect the community against diseases such as measles. 鈥溾�� shields people who can鈥檛 be protected directly by vaccines.
This is why high vaccination rates are everybody鈥檚 business.
Governments use various to promote vaccine acceptance. They need to be free, accessible, and promoted well .
But when governments do this poorly, they may to prompt people to get vaccinated. US states are on vaccine mandates because of the country鈥檚 under-resourced and privatised health system, which can make it difficult for some families to access vaccines.
Removing mandates is risky
Experts have on vaccine mandates. But almost all agree governments should in the first instance.
Most would also agree that whatever you think of mandates, removing them is risky business.
In most US states, tensions around mandating vaccines are managed through religious and/or personal belief exemptions. These allow parents to opt out after following a bureaucratic process, such as completing a form with a clinician or participating in education.
The is influential 鈥� easily accessible exemptions result in .
What鈥檚 been happening in the US?
The Florida proposal joins a of state legislators seeking to make school vaccine mandates more restrictive or more permissive. Republicans to loosen mandates, but both Democrats and Republicans led efforts to make them stricter.
These efforts in both directions have grown more extreme in recent years. The , and the courts got involved.
In 2015, California became the first state to . This Democrat-led measure was a response to about vaccine refusal and disease outbreaks.
In 2023, a Mississippi judge to that state鈥檚 mandate. Previously, Mississippi was one of the few states that only on medical grounds.
Applying more coercive policy to vaccine refusers seems to have , and is in part responsible for shifting to vaccines themselves.
The proposed Florida policy is just a more extreme form of this: Republicans are no longer tinkering with vaccine mandates but removing them altogether.
What happens if Florida goes ahead?
Without a lever to prompt vaccination, some parents in Florida will stop vaccinating their children.
They won鈥檛 all be vaccine refusers. Many will be poor, disadvantaged or busy parents who need the prompt of the school enrolment routine.
Some will also take the cue from federal and state governments that vaccination isn鈥檛 important or valuable. Worse, they may internalise RFK Jr鈥檚 messaging that it鈥檚 .
Childhood vaccination rates have already by 2.5 percentage points in the US since the pandemic.
In Florida, where parents can currently access , the coverage rate for kindergarteners 鈥� from 93.8% before the pandemic to 88.7% in 2025 鈥� leaving thousands of children unprotected.
This rate will decline even further without mandates.
And the damage won鈥檛 be limited to Florida. Mobile Americans will spread disease to other states and other countries. Even a will come with increased risks.
In the longer term, other Republican-led states are . In each of them, we can expect to see more outbreaks, suffering and death, and likely more cases elsewhere in the US, and around the world.
Could this happen in Australia?
Vaccination and vaccine policy is not politicised in Australia in the same way.
There is strong, bipartisan support for vaccine mandates; both 鈥淣o Jab, No Play鈥� and 鈥淣o Jab, No Pay鈥� policies for children to attend early education, and for families to receive government benefits.
There is also for childhood vaccination and vaccine mandates among those who vote for the major parties.
The greatest risk we face is from adjacent developments in the United States. RFK Jr is distorting vaccine information and .
This attempt to make anti-vaccination messaging mainstream will affect vaccine confidence in Australia, and potentially vaccination rates 鈥� but we don鈥檛 know how much.
Most Australian parents support vaccination. But we can鈥檛 afford to lose any more people who vaccinate because our coverage has already since the pandemic.
To prepare for these threats, we need to ensure our own house is in order. The federal government鈥檚 new aims to improve access, strengthen the workforce, use data more effectively to guide us and increase community confidence.
The strategy also promises to look into a for rare vaccine injuries.
We need to see this bold agenda implemented well, with sufficient budget, and with a strong role for our new Centre for Disease Control, which will .
We also need to for our regional neighbours, where low and declining coverage has led to large outbreaks.
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, Professor, School of Social Sciences, ; , Professor, School of Public Health, , and , Deputy Executive Dean (Research Centres), Faculty of Medicine and Health,
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