U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is seeking federal government access to most Americans’ medical records to research a link between vaccines and autism, a connection the medical establishment has studied for decades and rejects.
The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking data from state systems that allow hospitals and clinics to exchange detailed, identifiable patient information.
In private meetings, some public health leaders have objected to giving Kennedy’s team access to such data, raising doubts about its legality and usefulness.
They have also expressed concerns about allowing the federal government to view Americans’ medical records, which could include doctors’ notes and prescription history.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told reporters that medical records are key to investigating the cause of autism, vaccine safety, and chronic diseases.
Millions of dollars in grant money has been awarded to a Nebraska nonprofit that has assisted Kennedy’s effort, according to state records.
Kennedy and his advisers have been frustrated that federal access to Americans’ medical records has been limited.
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He said in a May interview, “We need a good health record system, and one of the things that really surprised me most when I came into office is that there is — that the systems are broken.”
HHS has not publicly announced any new projects involving medical records and autism or vaccine research.
Kennedy faced blowback last year when he proposed compiling the medical records of people with autism to create a federal disease registry — which health department officials later disputed was underway.
But he said in May, “We have a whole pipeline of studies that will be done over the next year.”
The White House has steered Kennedy away from further changes to U.S. vaccine policy ahead of November’s midterm elections.
President Donald Trump has regularly echoed Kennedy’s doubts about vaccine safety and last week signed an executive order calling for the U.S. to reduce the number of vaccines recommended for children.
Kennedy’s political appointees and allies have led the initiative for the health department to collect and examine medical records.
Federal officials met with leaders of the state-run health information exchange systems several times over the past year and asked how the personal medical records they maintain could be used for vaccine research.
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Craig Behm, who runs the Maryland health information exchange, said Kennedy’s team asked about how the vast trove of medical records they store from hospitals and health systems could be used to study vaccines.
Nearly every state has at least one health information exchange that enables hospitals and health systems to immediately share patients’ medical records with one another.
These systems allow doctors and nurses to quickly pull up nearly anyone’s medical history and records at emergency rooms or share after-visit summaries and notes with patients’ primary care providers.
Behm said his organization in Maryland declined to share more data with the federal government for vaccine research, noting that sharing medical records for that purpose would require approvals from hospitals, state political leaders, and research boards.
Jaime Bland, former CEO of CyncHealth — the Nebraska health information exchange used by most hospitals and health systems in the state — said several states are looking to “open up channels” to provide more analysis to Kennedy’s team.
CyncHealth was then awarded three contracts totaling $13.6 million from the state health department, according to a publicly accessible database of state contracts.
It retained $2.4 million of the funding for Kennedy’s project.
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