This Group of Concerned Grandparents Is Changing the Vaccine Conversation
“Their lives and safety are under threat, and who better than their grandparents to stand up for them and protect them?”
Dr. Arthur Lavin founded Grandparents for Vaccines in 2025 to give grandparents the chance to share stories of how vaccines changed their lives and ensure today’s generation of children is protected from preventable illnesses and diseases. It began as a direct response to the rise of concern among parents about vaccines, which is causing increasing fear among well-meaning new parents who want to do right by their kids and leading to fewer and fewer kids being immunized — not just in North Dakota but all across the country.
“From our point of view, the door is opening to the return of a world where some pretty horrifying catastrophes — which once were part of our generation and that our children didn’t have to worry about [due to the advent of immunizations] — are now being invited back into our lives,” Dr. Lavin shared with us. “We couldn’t just stand by as grandparents and let that happen.”
Prior to founding Grandparents for Vaccines, Dr. Lavin spent 40 years practicing pediatric medicine and helping countless families understand the benefit-risk ratio when it comes to vaccines. Teri Mills, a retired nurse educator and practitioner, joined him alongside several other individuals passionate about public health and community wellness in building the fully volunteer-led organization.
Both Mills and Lavin are part of the aptly named “polio generation,” a period in the late 1940s and early 1950s in which tens of thousands of Americans contracted the debilitating disease annually, a significant percentage of whom died as a result. Teri can still recall the day she and her twin sister got the vaccine. “There were lines wrapped around the schools,” she shared. “Church bells rang.”
Now, one in six parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children. “That means that we'll never reach herd immunity, which helps to keep all of us safe,” Mills said. “And especially with our kindergarten or littlest people, we're very concerned about what's going on with them.”
The work being done by GFV is vital, particularly with news coming out earlier this month that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has overhauled its recommended vaccine schedule, including reducing the number of recommended vaccines to just 11 (down from 17) and removing vaccines that protect against preventable illnesses like influenza, hepatitis A and B, RSV, rotavirus, and meningococcal disease.
It’s that last one that Dr. Lavin is especially concerned about. When he was still in his first year of training as a pediatrician, he held the hand of an 8-year-old patient as the child suffered from and ultimately died of meningitis.
“There was nothing that could be done at that point. Antibiotics weren’t working,” Lavin shared. Not too long after that, the meningococcal vaccine came out. “I used to see kids with this meningococcal type of meningitis and sepsis regularly in the hospital, and after the vaccine came out, we stopped seeing it. I actually saw it disappear. The United States decided to invite that disease back into our lives — to say, ‘Come on back. Let's have kids die of this disease. And it's not just that it kills you. It kills you through days of torture. It's a miserable way to die. Any way to die for a child is horrifying, but this involves great suffering.”
To support Grandparents for Vaccines in this work, the Foundation for a Healthy North Dakota is launching a North Dakota chapter with a kick off slated for February 2026. The chapter will bring North Dakotan grandparents together on a regular basis to connect with each other, share stories, participate in a book club and reach out to other community members to start conversations geared toward keeping North Dakotan kids safe.
“Grandparents have a very unique role in our families,” Mills told us. “There’s no denying the love that a grandparent has for their grandchild, and we know there’s so much misinformation and fear out there. We feel the best way to go around that is to use our wisdom, and our stories, and our love, and the trust that our families put in us. We’re trying to be the antidote and move the conversation.”
“There are a lot of parents out there who are really trying to do the best that they can for their children. Dr. Lavin added. “What we want to do is open the door for the conversation … And we're hearing when we tell the stories to some of these concerned parents, they're saying, ‘Why haven't you ever talked to us about this before?’ To have someone face to face speak to you about what it was like to lose a child, or grandchild, or twin brother, it's something that you can't really appreciate unless you hear these stories.”
Instead of the adjusted CDC and HHS recommendations, Grandparents for Vaccines continues to support the American Academy of Pediatrics’ vaccine schedule, which remains unchanged.
“It's not just that it’s a better schedule. You're more likely to be alive and safe if you follow that guidance. I'm speaking as someone who saw the ravages of that disease,” Dr. Lavin told us. “And the meningococcal germ hasn't gone anywhere, so if people stop immunizing it will come back. So it really just comes down to that: Do we want to be sitting at the bedside of our dying grandchildren and children?”
To get involved with the North Dakota Chapter of Grandparents for Vaccines, you can fill out this signup form to receive email updates as the kickoff event nears. You can also learn more about Dr. Lavin and Teri’s work by visiting grandparentsforvaccines.com.