The growing number of American infants going without a potentially lifesaving intervention — the vitamin K shot — should be a clarion call to top U.S. health officials.
But instead of a concerted federal effort to restore confidence in the shot, which can prevent dangerous bleeding in infants, the U.S. seems poised to let the situation get worse.
The number of American newborns who didn’t receive a vitamin K shot more than doubled between 2017 and 2025, according to a new analysis of health records of millions of babies. The consequences have been predictably heartbreaking: another new study found that cases of infants bleeding because of vitamin K deficiency, a situation that can be fatal, rose 347% in that time, with a sharp uptick since 2024.
In normal times, federal health officials would mobilize to reverse that trend. Instead, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — and even President Donald Trump — have helped create an environment where parents are increasingly skeptical of routine childhood preventative care. Doctors alone can’t — and shouldn’t — be left to try to turn things around on their own.
Vitamin K is crucial for forming the blood clots that people need to stop bleeding. Yet newborns arrive in the world with little of the nutrient, which doesn’t travel well from placenta to baby. And while the rest of us get it from the food we eat and through our intestinal bacteria, breast milk doesn’t contain enough vitamin K to stop a bleed — and infants’ gut microbiomes take time to populate.