By Zachary Stieber
Contributing Writer
A panel newly remade by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will no longer be convening in March, the Department of Health and Human Services says.
The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, which offers recommendations to federal officials regarding autism-related issues such as research, “will not meet later this month,” a spokesperson for the health department told news outlets in a statement on Saturday.
“Further information will be shared as available,” the spokesperson said.
IACC’s website still lists a meeting scheduled for March 19.
Dr. Sylvia Fogel, a psychiatry instructor at Harvard Medical School and the chair of the remade panel, said in a Sunday post on X that the meeting was postponed.
“Please know that we are actively working to reschedule the meeting and will share the new date as soon as possible,” she wrote. “I recognize the urgency of the issues facing the autism community, and I understand this delay may feel discouraging.”
The panel had been set to convene in Bethesda, Maryland, at the National Institutes of Health. The government had not released an agenda for the meeting.
In January, Kennedy revamped the panel, naming new members who he said would help officials modernize autism research, as directed by President Donald Trump.
“We are doing that by appointing the most qualified experts — leaders with decades of experience studying, researching and treating autism,” Kennedy said at the time. “These public servants will pursue rigorous science and deliver the answers Americans deserve.”
A number of the new members have said that vaccines are a cause of autism, prompting criticism from outside experts, including former IACC members.
On March 3, Dr. Joshua Gordon and some other former members or critics announced the formation of a competing panel, dubbed the I-ACC, that they said would provide independent advice on autism research.
The I-ACC is still set to meet on March 19 at the National Press Club in Washington. The panel will provide updates on implementation of a federal law that provided funding for autism research, discuss strategies for developing a plan for autism research coordination, and outline priorities for research moving forward, according to an agenda it released.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is part of Kennedy’s department, said in 2025 that it was rescinding its position that vaccines definitely do not cause autism “because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”
Kennedy has said that researchers have not properly studied whether vaccines cause autism and has said that the government is funding proper research into the matter.
