Kennedy Announces NIH Vaccine Injury Research Clinic

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced a National Institutes of Health initiative to study and provide care for people who believe they have been injured by vaccines, while key details about the clinic’s funding, enrollment and research oversight have not been made public. The initiative was unveiled Monday at the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. It includes a clinic at the NIH Clinical Center, according to accounts of the plan, and may eventually extend to other centers around the country, NIH website notices said. The notices describe a vaccine-injury research program; they do not establish that any expansion has begun. People familiar with the initiative told reporters that Kennedy also plans a billing code to reimburse doctors for reporting serious suspected vaccine side effects. A separate account described plans to update the federal adverse-event tracking system and introduce new electronic health record requirements. The payment mechanism remains a proposal, and its terms and implementation have not been publicly specified.