A proposal from the National Vaccine Advisory Committee suggested compensating physicians for counseling parents on getting their children vaccinated.
The proposal draft also included a suggestion to establish a minimum coverage goal for physicians to inoculate patients. The committee suggested the additional incentives hoping they might reduce the number of parents choosing to opt their children out of vaccinations, according to Bloomberg Business.
The group will meet again in June to finalize the draft before recommending it to the HHS' National Vaccine Program Office.
The proposal comes as a measles epidemic spreads across the U.S., now present in 17 states. The largest number of cases is still in California, which also has high concentrations of unvaccinated people, but Arizona has reported seven cases and Washington state has reported 4, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"I'm worried about demonization on both sides of the issue," Janesse Brewer, a public policy expert who directed national vaccine safety discussions from 2008 to 2010, told Bloomberg Business. "We have an outbreak that is front and center that clearly demonstrates what we are doing isn't working. This is the moment to seize upon the fact that everyone wants the same thing — essentially healthy children and a healthy population."