Covid Parents now skipping more than vaccines as newborn care refusal surges By BeckhamLangford, A growing number of American parents are refusing standard newborn medical interventions that go well beyond childhood vaccines, including vitamin K injections and antibiotic eye ointment. A retrospective study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, covering 5,096,633 births recorded between January 2017 and December 2024, found that nonreceipt of intramuscular vitamin K prophylaxis rose substantially over that period. The trend has accelerated alongside a federal policy shift that made the hepatitis B birth dose optional for some infants, raising concerns among pediatricians that parents now view all routine newborn care as negotiable. Five Million Births Reveal a Sharp Climb in Refusals The clearest evidence of this shift comes from a nationwide cohort study in JAMA that drew on electronic health records from Epic Systems’ Cosmos platform. Researchers examined more than five million births across the United States from January 2017 through December 2024 and measured how often newborns did not receive the standard intramuscular vitamin K shot. The study found that refusals or nonreceipt of the prophylaxis increased substantially over the study period, a finding that alarmed neonatal specialists because vitamin K prevents a rare but potentially fatal bleeding disorder in infants. The same body of research attracted attention from major outlets. Reporting in the Washington Post noted that the JAMA analysis also documented parents refusing erythromycin eye ointment, a medication applied at birth to prevent bacterial eye infections that can cause blindness. What once seemed like an isolated pocket of vaccine hesitancy has broadened into a wider pattern of skepticism toward procedures that have been standard in delivery rooms for decades