Nola Jean Ernest is a pediatrician working in the wiregrass region of Alabama.

Which is the southeast corner of Alabama, where I like to say we don't have interstates and we don't have children's hospitals.

So the pediatricians in this area really are the frontline experts in kids' health for all of the children.

In her work, Dr. Ernest encounters a lot of skepticism around childhood vaccines,

and she sees it as her job to convince her patients that vaccines are safe and effective. But recently, even in the

last week, she has noticed a change in how some parents are thinking about the vaccine for hepatitis

B, which for decades has been recommended for all newborns in the U.S. In the past, declining the

hepatitis dose vaccine at birth was pretty rare.

We would come up against it one or two times a year.

In the last six months, it has become increasingly common.

But this week, all of the newborns that I have seen this week in my clinic declined the birthdose of hepatitis B.

It's no secret that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is on a mission to reshape

childhood immunization in the U.S. And so far, he's been pretty successful.

He's directed the CDC to publish language suggesting that there might be a link between

vaccines and autism.

He's replaced every member of the vaccine advisory panel with his own picks.

Now, that panel has recommended dropping the universal birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine

for newborns.

Health reporter Lena Sun says that new leadership at the CDC are expected to approve that change

and that it could have major impacts on patients and doctors around the country.

This will be a substantial change to the childhood immunization schedule, maybe the most substantial

in decades. And it would just be the opening salvo for Robert F. Kennedy, who has always wanted to upend the childhood vaccination schedule

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