{"id":11525,"date":"2026-02-25T17:06:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T23:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=11525"},"modified":"2026-02-25T17:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T23:06:09","slug":"u-s-newborn-hepatitis-b-vaccination-rates-plunge-reversing-years-of-gains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2026\/02\/25\/u-s-newborn-hepatitis-b-vaccination-rates-plunge-reversing-years-of-gains\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Newborn Hepatitis B Vaccination Rates Plunge, Reversing Years of Gains"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.medpagetoday.com\/infectiousdisease\/hepatitis\/119986?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2026-02-23&amp;mh=07f73d99b2b546c079b0b5a2312d87b1&amp;zdee=gAAAAABm4uVVa0noffRIJqPd2rsKKgBm5ZURWXfuJljHxkA5SxaiDrFhpdNSLVuatrcndghIUJbdB8i3tZ00Sf5MYAfngC1RuyQP-n6FrYFzvROxn-4_blA%3D&amp;utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%20Evening%20-%20Randomized%202026-02-23&amp;utm_term=NL_Daily_DHE_dual-gmail-definition\">MedPageToday<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/jamanetwork.com\/journals\/jama\/fullarticle\/10.1001\/jama.2026.0866\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"JAMA, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>JAMA<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;A lot of families are talking about vaccines right now, and so we really wanted to understand &#8230; when did that shift in the newborn hepatitis B vaccine rates start?&#8221; Rothman told&nbsp;<em>MedPage Today<\/em>. &#8220;And then, what could have influenced that shift? We really wanted to know how much those rates were declining.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.medpagetoday.com\/infectiousdisease\/hepatitis\/119986?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2026-02-23&amp;mh=07f73d99b2b546c079b0b5a2312d87b1&amp;zdee=gAAAAABm4uVVa0noffRIJqPd2rsKKgBm5ZURWXfuJljHxkA5SxaiDrFhpdNSLVuatrcndghIUJbdB8i3tZ00Sf5MYAfngC1RuyQP-n6FrYFzvROxn-4_blA%3D&amp;utm_source=Sailthru&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%20Evening%20-%20Randomized%202026-02-23&amp;utm_term=NL_Daily_DHE_dual-gmail-definition\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<!-- <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" title=\" YTTHuKZAkU Nrjzqw VcW Kgk L  h\"> YTTHuKZAkU Nrjzqw VcW Kgk L  h<\/a> --><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vaccine-headlines"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11526,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11525\/revisions\/11526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}