Sponsor
Timothy Michael Kaine
Senator · D-VA
Senator · D-VA
The bill strengthens maternal and childhood vaccination outreach and counseling by funding a multi-year CDC awareness campaign and explicitly involving obstetric providers, at the cost of modest multi-year federal spending increases and potential local budget reprioritization.
Pregnant and postpartum people (and their children) — including racial and ethnic minorities — will have increased access to vaccination outreach and programs aimed at raising maternal and childhood vaccination rates.
The CDC will receive multi-year funding for a national vaccination awareness campaign, providing steady federal support for outreach materials and coordination that state and local public health programs and hospitals can use.
Obstetric providers are explicitly included, which should improve consistency of vaccine counseling across prenatal and obstetric care settings for pregnant people.
Taxpayers and the federal budget will face increased obligations to fund the expanded vaccination campaign (multi-year appropriations totaling several million dollars per year).
State and local health programs and health systems may need to shift grant proposals or reprioritize limited local resources to align with the added maternal vaccination objectives, potentially disrupting other priorities.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Adds obstetric providers to the national vaccination campaign, adds maternal vaccination objectives to preventive-services grants, and raises campaign funding to $7M/year for FY2027–2031.
Official title: Amend the Public Health Service Act to increase vaccination rates of pregnant and postpartum individuals, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 18, 2026 by Timothy Michael Kaine · Last progress March 18, 2026
Expands federal efforts to raise vaccination rates among pregnant and postpartum people and their children by amending the Public Health Service Act. It broadens the national vaccination awareness campaign to explicitly include obstetric providers, adds maternal vaccination objectives to preventive-services grant purposes, and raises the specified federal funding level for that campaign from $5 million to $7 million annually for FY2027–2031.