MedPageToday Hepatitis B vaccination rates among U.S. newborns have fallen by more than 10 percentage points over the past 2 years, reversing 6 years of steady gains, according to an analysis of electronic health records.
Among more than 12 million infants, birth-dose hepatitis B vaccination rates rose from 67.5% in January 2017 to a peak of 83.5% in February 2023 before declining to 73.2% by August 2025, reported Joshua M. Rothman, MD, MS, of the University of California San Diego, and colleagues in a research letter published in JAMA.
“A lot of families are talking about vaccines right now, and so we really wanted to understand … when did that shift in the newborn hepatitis B vaccine rates start?” Rothman told MedPage Today. “And then, what could have influenced that shift? We really wanted to know how much those rates were declining.”
Using an autoregressive integrated moving average model, the researchers found that vaccination rates beginning in July 2023 fell significantly below forecasted levels, marking a sustained divergence from prior trends.