WASHINGTON — Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday unveiled the names of the eight new members who will sit on the panel of experts that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine policy, and said they would review the current vaccine schedule, as well as evaluate new shots.

The new members include several well-known critics of vaccines.

“The slate includes highly credentialed scientists, leading public-health experts, and some of America’s most accomplished physicians,” Kennedy wrote in a post on X.

The appointment comes just days after Kennedy dismissed every member of the committee, calling for a “clean slate” with new members. The committee is scheduled to hold a meeting later this month.

The firings of the ACIP members marked the most drastic step Kennedy has taken thus far to shake up the public health apparatus that reviews and issues recommendations on vaccines. ACIP studies vaccines in the regulatory pipeline and offers recommendations to the CDC on who they should be offered to once they have been approved.

The eight new members, a significant decline from the 17 that previously served on the panel, are:

• Joseph R. Hibbeln, a psychiatrist and nutritional scientist who previously worked on nutritional neuroscience at the NIH;
• Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist formerly at Harvard Medical School, who has served on an FDA safety committee as well as the vaccine subgroup of ACIP;
• Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management;
• Robert Malone, a physician who conducted early research on mRNA vaccine technology;
• Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, who has previously held advisory roles at CDC and FDA, including as an ACIP member;
• James Pagano, an emergency medicine physician;
• Vicky Pebsworth, a nurse with a Ph.D. in public health, who has previously served on FDA vaccine advisory committees;
• Michael Ross, an OB-GYN who has served on a CDC advisory committee for the prevention of breast and cervical cancer.