Exclusive-US refusals of crucial newborn vitamin spike, raising risk of dangerous bleeding

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO, Sept 1 (Reuters) – The percentage of parents and caregivers in the United States refusing a standard vitamin K shot for infants at birth has accelerated sharply this year, an exclusive data analysis for Reuters found, putting more newborns at risk of life-threatening bleeding episodes.

The data confirms what a dozen pediatricians, neonatologists and pediatric critical care specialists told Reuters is a top concern: rising refusals of a life-protective shot and a growing wave of mistrust toward vaccines and other newborn interventions.

For decades, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stoked that mistrust, sowing doubt about vaccines and other established medicines. The acceleration in vitamin K refusals this year aligns with his January announcement dropping recommendations for the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, and five other standard childhood vaccines, from routine use.

The rate of newborns not receiving the vitamin K shot within a day of birth in hospitals jumped more than 57% from January through June, a review of health records for more than 1 million births nationwide by health data and analytics company Truveta revealed.

While vitamin K refusals have been on the rise for years, the Truveta analysis shows that in the first half of 2026, the rate of non-receipt was 2.5 times higher than the average rate from 2019 to 2024. It was 1.4 times higher than in 2025.

Babies are born with very low levels of vitamin K, which helps blood to clot, and are unprotected up until about six months of age, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which still recommends the shot. Without the injection, they are 81 times more likely in those first six months to have life-threatening bleeding in the brain or gut, the CDC says.

One out of five infants who experience serious bleeding will die. Without the shot, such bleeding occurs in one out of 59 births.

“It’s really terrifying. It’s like we’re going backwards,” Dr. Nia Heard-Garris, pediatric physician scientist at Lurie Children’s Hospital, Chicago, said of growing refusals. “We’re trying really hard to keep little babies alive.”

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION MESSAGES

Pediatricians like Heard-Garris are on the frontlines, caring for children as parents digest changes in U.S. health policy to align with Kennedy’s and President Donald Trump’s views, which are often at odds with the medical community.

When Kennedy dropped recommendations for the six childhood vaccines, he said American children got too many shots and suggested they were linked to chronic illness, for which there is no evidence.

Those changes are on hold due to a court ruling, but Trump called for them again in an August 10 executive order. Experts say the mixed messages have raised doubts among many parents about routine newborn treatments, including vitamin K.

When asked about declining support for vitamin K relative to those policies in an April Congressional hearing, Kennedy denied any role.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Grace Davis Jamison said the agency and the CDC are evaluating available data and surveillance related to vitamin K refusal and associated bleeding events. It continues to provide parents and health care providers with information about vitamin K, she said.

“Concerns about vitamin K and declining trust in public health institutions predate this administration and grew during the COVID-19 pandemic amid heavy-handed mandates during the Biden administration,” she said, adding that the agency is working to rebuild trust including through respect for individual choice.

GROWING PROBLEM

The percentage of U.S. infants not receiving vitamin K at birth climbed to 8.1% at the end of June, from 5.2% six months earlier, according to the Truveta study, which reviewed health records from more than 140 million people. It identified 1,026,375 infants born to 825,599 mothers between January 2019 and June 2026.

Dr. Amanda Furr, chief medical officer of Zarminali Pediatrics, which operates 45 pediatric practices in 13 states, sees patients at a clinic in Rockville, Indiana, a town of 2,600 residents.

Vitamin K refusals in hospitals have become so common that Zarminali has started stocking the shot in all primary care practices, Furr said. Two other doctors told Reuters they were also now providing the shots.

EARLY SIGN OF TROUBLE

When Dr. Sarah Coggins was a medical student at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in 2013, Nashville experienced an unusual cluster of babies with severe bleeding from vitamin K deficiency.

Their parents believed the shot was unnecessary, and potentially toxic or carcinogenic, according to an account published by the CDC. Coggins cared for one of these infants.

“The baby had long-term brain damage,” said Coggins, now a neonatologist with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “I’ve always carried that with me. I think most pediatricians have a story like that.”

Vitamin K refusals soon began to rise, a previous nationwide study showed.

Coggins is fighting mistrust of the shot in her own practice, which requires parents who refuse to sign a form saying they understand the risks.

She and others have noticed a difference, however, in parents who oppose the shots but want their boy babies circumcised. Many hospitals prohibit circumcision in boys who have not received vitamin K because of the bleeding risk of such procedures.

Coggins and colleagues studied medical records at three hospitals affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania health system in Philadelphia and found being born a girl was associated with twice the risk of vitamin K refusal.

Truveta’s national analysis confirms that finding, showing that baby girls are disproportionately impacted by the rising rates of vitamin K refusals. In June of 2026, 8.9% of girls and 7.3% of boys had not received the shot within a day of birth.

That raises the question of whether vitamin K deficiency —and bleeding events — will start to affect more girl babies.

“It’s not a theoretical risk. It keeps me up at night,” said Coggins, who is working with colleagues to design a study to answer that question.

TAKING A HARD LINE

The desire to have male children circumcised often overrides parents’ concerns, several pediatricians said.

About half of U.S. boys are circumcised in hospitals.

“We have an absolute hard line: no vitamin K, no circumcision,” said Dr. Brad Scoggins of San Juan Health Partners’ Pediatrics in Farmington, New Mexico.

Scoggins agrees with studies by Coggins and others linking increasing vitamin K refusals with rejection of other key newborn interventions, including the hepatitis B vaccine and an often important antibiotic eye ointment.

“That just gets put in the same bucket,” he said.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)