Reportable Disease Cases Since RFK Jr. Took Over HHS
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became Secretary of Health and Human Services on February 13, 2025, and has since removed the CDC's vaccine advisory committee, bypassed it entirely to change the childhood immunization schedule, and rewritten its charter. This map tracks real, state-by-state case counts for every disease the CDC requires states to report, before and after his tenure, so you can see the actual numbers next to the actual policy timeline.
NNDSS publishes provisional weekly counts that can run a bit under CDC's later-reviewed confirmed totals; for 2025 measles, this map's CDC-sourced state data sums to about 2,026 cases against the widely reported confirmed figure of 2,289, an expected gap from revision timing, not an error. 2026 is a partial year, shown as of the most recent reported week, not a final annual total. A state's case count is also shaped by its own vaccination rates, outbreak exposure, and reporting completeness, not federal policy alone, so read the map and the policy timeline below as two real, related facts to weigh together, not a single proven cause and effect.
What actually changed
Every item below is a real, dated action, with a source.
Methodology
Case data: CDC's National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) weekly tables, which collect provisional case counts for every nationally notifiable disease from all 50 states, D.C., and U.S. territories. Each state's annual total is that state's cumulative year-to-date count at the year's final reported week, not a sum of weekly counts (which would double-count, since the cumulative field already accumulates). New York City, which NNDSS reports separately from New York State, is merged into the state total.
Rates: per-100,000 rates use real 2024 Census ACS 1-year state population estimates, fetched live, not hardcoded.
Disease scope: all 139 nationally notifiable diseases and conditions in the live NNDSS data are included. Seven vaccine-preventable diseases most directly relevant to recent federal vaccine policy changes are marked "Featured" at the top of the list; everything else NNDSS tracks is still there below them, not hidden.
Data pulled August 2026.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2026). NNDSS weekly data [Data set]. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://data.cdc.gov/NNDSS/NNDSS-Weekly-Data/x9gk-5huc
Congressional Research Service. (2026). Changes to CDC vaccine recommendations in 2025 and 2026 (IN12684). Library of Congress. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN12684
U.S. Census Bureau. (2024). American Community Survey 1-year estimates [Data set]. U.S. Department of Commerce. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs
U.S. Census Bureau. (2020). TIGER/Line shapefiles [Data set]. U.S. Department of Commerce. https://www.census.gov/geographies/mapping-files/time-series/geo/tiger-line-file.html