Apr 10 Policy Watch: HHS updates criteria for selecting vaccine-committee members

HHS updates priorities for selecting vaccine-committee members

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Monday renewed the charter for its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the body that makes recommendations about vaccines.

ACIP’s recommendations have enormous influence over which vaccines Americans can access: federal law requires insurers to cover ACIP-recommended shots, and many programs such as Medicaid base their benefits on its vaccine schedule.

With the latest charter—which is renewed every 2 years—HHS appears to be changing the qualifications for people who serve as ACIP members. The previous charter specified that members should have expertise in immunization, vaccines, and public health, with additional nonvoting representatives from relevant professional associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), and the American Pharmacists Association.

The new document instead calls for the committee to have “necessary expertise and fairly balanced membership,” with voting members representing a diversity of geographic locations and specialty areas, including immunology, pediatrics, biostatistics, toxicology, and “consumer issues.” There is no mention of professional associations and nonvoting members.

“[T]he ACIP charter must continue to allow for liaison members from health professional societies to ensure clinicians can contribute to the committee’s discussions and decisions,” ISDA president Ronald G. Nahass says in a statement. “The lack of collaboration with clinicians and absence of a scientific foundation in ACIP’s recommendations have left both patients and clinicians confused and concerned about where to turn for trustworthy vaccine guidance.”

HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told NBC News that the charter renewal and publication “are routine statutory requirements and do not signal any broader policy shift.”

The updates to the charter follow a March 16 ruling that blocked all votes (PDF) made by the current ACIP on the grounds that its members were not properly appointed and some were likely unqualified to serve. In November, AAP and five other medical associations sued HHS following HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s June dismissal of the entire ACIP. Kennedy is a longtime antivaccine activist.

Boston-based US district judge Brian E. Murphy stopped short of declaring which committee members were ineligible.

—Laura Dattaro, special to C&EN

EPA eases methane emission rules for oil and gas companies

The US Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule Monday that allows oil and gas companies to burn off natural gas for a longer period of time under certain circumstances and that weakens efficiency monitoring requirements for combustion devices.

The action undoes some of the methane emission restrictions finalized in 2024 by the Joe Biden administration under the Clean Air Act rule for oil and natural gas sources, commonly known as OOOOb/c.

Under the April 6 final rule (PDF), companies can flare natural gas for up to 72 h when they’re doing maintenance, up from 24 h under the Biden-era rule. The EPA also rolled back requirements for oil and gas companies to monitor how efficient their vent-gas flaring and enclosed combustion devices are. They are no longer obligated to continually perform this net heating value sampling.

“My predecessors weaponized environmental regulations to regulate the oil and gas industry out of existence. We are taking another step to fix those mistakes while proving we can both protect human health and the environment and grow the economy at the same time,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin says in a statement.

Flaring is burning natural gas off into the atmosphere during oil extraction, either to relieve a sudden pressure change or because collecting the gas is uneconomical. The process gives off CO₂ and methane, both greenhouse gases. But methane is considered a super-pollutant, with 29.8 times the global warming potential of CO₂ over 100 years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (PDF).

“Flaring natural gas wastes a vital energy resource at a time when power bills are already sky high for American families, and is a major source of methane emissions and other dangerous pollution,” Jon Goldstein, associate vice president of energy transition at the Environmental Defense Fund, says in a statement. “These sweeping rollbacks are happening despite recognition among industry leaders that regulations that reduce methane emissions are key to the global competitiveness of U.S. natural gas.”

The EPA estimates that the rule will save $2.5 billion over 15 years, equivalent to $208 million annually in industry compliance costs. The changes go into effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.

—Leigh Krietsch Boerner

US faculty salaries are not keeping up with inflation, survey finds

Full-time faculty salaries at US higher-education institutions increased by 2.3%, on average, between fall 2024 and fall 2025. But after accounting for inflation, these faculties’ salaries actually dropped by 0.4%, according to preliminary results released April 7 from a faculty compensation survey by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

The annual survey probes employment data from 780 US colleges and universities, capturing salaries and other forms of compensation for approximately 360,000 full-time and 125,000 part-time faculty members.

The decrease in full-time faculty salaries comes after 2 consecutive years of small, inflation-adjusted pay bumps: a 0.9% increase (PDF) in the 2023–24 academic year and a 0.4% increase (PDF) in the 2022–23 academic year.

Prior to that, faculty saw a 7.5% cumulative drop, on average, from fall 2019 to fall 2022 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, a pay cut they have yet to recover from. Current salaries are still around 7% lower than they were in fall 2019 when adjusted for inflation.

Meanwhile, continuing full-time faculty, or those who were employed full-time at their university for the previous year and continued to be employed in the current year, saw a 0.7% bump this past academic year, after adjusting for inflation. But that’s still smaller than the 1.5% and 1.8% increases they saw in the previous 2 years.

Because the results are still preliminary, AAUP did not provide any explanations for the salary data. But in last year’s report, they highlighted growing volatility in state funding for public higher education, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. They also noted that by fall 2025, institutions were facing added economic uncertainty due to funding cuts, grant freezes, and visa restrictions from the Donald J. Trump administration.

—Krystal Vasquez

EPA proposes expanded use of refrigerant considered PFAS by some

The US Environmental Protection Agency has proposed a rule to allow the refrigerant 2,3,3,3-tetrafluoropropene, also known as HFO-1234yf, in the air conditioning systems of retrofitted heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans.

The proposal, published April 6 in the Federal Register, would list HFO-1234yf as an acceptable alternative refrigerant under the Significant New Alternatives Policy Program, which is meant to transition industry away from the ozone-depleting substances and hydrofluorocarbons with high global warming potential that have historically been used as refrigerants.

HFO-1234yf has a lower global warming potential than carbon dioxide. The substance is already used in newly manufactured heavy-duty pickup trucks as of this year and has been used in many passenger cars for about a decade. But HFO-1234yf fits some definitions of a per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) and breaks down into trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), a PFAS that has rapidly accumulated in the environment in recent years.

The EPA is accepting public comments until May 6, unless a public hearing on the proposal takes place. The agency will accept requests for a public hearing until April 13.

—Delger Erdenesanaa