WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration on Thursday published an updated charter for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, broadening qualifications for panel members and expanding the committee's research directives.

The updated charter includes language directing the advisory panel to study gaps in vaccine safety research and to consider the cumulative effects of vaccine doses on patients. It also instructs the committee to examine vaccination schedules used by other countries. The broadened qualifications for panel membership would allow the inclusion of allies of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who ousted all previous members of the committee soon after taking office and replaced them with his own selections.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices advises the CDC, which has typically followed the committee's recommendations on vaccine use. Those recommendations have guided state vaccine requirements for schools and coverage decisions made by health insurance providers. The committee's charter is renewed every two years.

Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said, "The ACIP charter renewal and its publication are routine statutory requirements and do not signal any broader policy shift." The charter update follows a series of actions taken by the reconstituted panel. The revamped committee declined to recommend COVID-19 vaccines for high-risk populations and voted to stop recommending most newborn hepatitis B shots. Separately, the administration narrowed the childhood vaccine schedule under Kennedy.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and other health groups filed a lawsuit seeking to block the changes to the panel charter and the childhood vaccine schedule. A federal judge agreed with the plaintiffs and temporarily halted meetings of the advisory committee. The administration has indicated it plans to appeal the judge's ruling but has not yet done so.