The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking access to Americans’ medical records, but says the effort is not aimed at investigating links between vaccines and autism.
In a June 4 statement to USA TODAY, an HHS spokesperson said the Department of Health is “strengthening public health surveillance and modernizing data systems to better understand and combat the epidemic of childhood chronic diseases as part of Secretary[Robert F.]Kennedy’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ agenda. Americans need a robust system to monitor the causes of chronic diseases.”
The statement came after KFF Health News reported that Secretary of Health Kennedy was tracking these records to study the link between vaccines and autism. The World Health Organization and other trusted health organizations around the world have repeatedly stated that evidence shows that vaccines do not cause autism.
Funding for the effort had already been allocated through a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program, according to a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly. The initiative is not evidence of a national patient database or master patient index, the sources added.
Autism has long been a major concern for Kennedy. Immediately after taking over as health secretary, he said he intended to find out the cause by his first September in office. The deadline has since passed, but many scientists and autism advocates were quick to cast skepticism on the idea anyway, saying it oversimplified a very complex problem.
Last year, HHS denied it was planning an autism registry after the National Institutes of Health appeared to share plans for one. According to a report by CBS News, NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharyya shared an effort to potentially create a “disease registry” to study autism during a presentation on the NIH division’s vision at the April 21, 2025, Council meeting. On April 25, HHS officials told USA TODAY that no such registry has been created.
The registry was conceived as part of an effort to build a “real-world data platform” that would gather information from the public and private sectors to support research, HHS officials told USA TODAY at the time. The official did not respond to USA TODAY’s questions about other disease registries or the use of nonpublic health data.
Contributor: Kinsey Crowley, USA TODAY
