UMN disease research center to launch vaccine integrity project

Imani Cruzen, Pioneer Press on Apr 24, 2025

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The University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy is launching an initiative to examine how non-governmental entities can help protect vaccine policy, information and utilization in the U.S.

Called the Vaccine Integrity Project, the initiative’s steering committee will gather feedback from professionals across the country during several sessions beginning this month and continuing into early August.

Sessions will include professional medical associations, public health organizations, state public health officials, vaccine manufacturers, medical and public health academia, health insurers, healthcare systems, pharmacies, health media experts and policymakers.

“People who care about preventing needless suffering and death from vaccination diseases have watched the current measles outbreak and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy (Jr.’s) rhetoric about vaccines with rising alarm…” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, regents professor and director of CIDRAP on Wednesday. “Every day, we seem to see new and disturbing developments occur around our vaccine enterprise. There have been conversations happening for months now across the public health community about what is it we can do with U.S. government vaccine information that becomes corrupted. What will we do? Or the system that helps to ensure their safety and efficacy are compromised.”

‘Science-based information’

The steering committee is comprised of eight public health and policy experts. Steering committee members include co-chairs Dr. Margaret Hamburg, co-president of the InterAcademy Partnership and former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, and Dr. Harvey Fineberg, president of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and past president of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, then known as the Institute of Medicine.

“This project acknowledges the unfortunate reality that the system that we’ve relied on to make vaccine recommendations and to review safety and effectiveness data faces threats,” Osterholm said in a statement. “It is prudent to evaluate whether independent activities may be needed to stand in its place and how non-governmental groups might operate to continue to provide science-based information to the American public.”

The project is supported by a $240,000 gift from iAlumbra, a foundation established by Christy Walton, philanthropist and widow of John T. Walton, son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton.

Based on initial session feedback, the initiative may develop a network of subject matter experts for vaccine evaluations and clinical guidelines development; identify knowledge gaps and recommend studies to improve vaccine-related evidence, practice, and policy; and review government decisions and messaging in order to provide evidence-based information, according to a release on the project.

“And I think the key thing is, this should not be a us versus them,” Osterholm said. “Ideally, it would all be we’re all working on this together…Every day children are not being vaccinated. They could and should be. Every day we’re seeing more cases of vaccine preventable diseases. Every day we see a greater erosion of vaccine confidence occurring…They deserve a factual approach, and we’ll just continue to pursue that.”

Sessions also will help develop scope, membership criteria and other factors, including priorities, communication channels and triggers to begin or end such efforts.

CIDRAP will provide regular updates on the project once the sessions are completed. A website on the initiative is also expected to be launched.

CIDRAP’s mission is to “prevent illness and death from targeted infectious disease threats through research and the translation of scientific evidence into real-world, practical applications, policies, and solutions.”

Efficacy of vaccines questioned by Kennedy

Kennedy has questioned the safety and efficacy of vaccines. While Kennedy insisted during his confirmation hearings that he is not anti-vaccine, he repeatedly refused to acknowledge scientific consensus that childhood vaccines don’t cause autism, that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives and falsely asserted the government has no good vaccine safety monitoring, according to the Associated Press.

The project is looking at bringing together a consortium of officials and others to come up with a science-based approach to issues, Osterholm said.

“Just this past week here in Minnesota, a group of state legislators submitted a bill to declare the mRNA vaccine technology as a weapon of mass destruction and that it should be immediately taken off the market, and anyone using it would be liable for a criminal activity,” Osterholm said. “Who’s going to respond to that? Is anybody at the federal government level going to respond to activities like that? That’s a question I think we are left to at this point unanswered.”

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