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• Posted December 9, 2025

More Parents Refuse Vitamin K Shot for Newborns, Study Finds

More parents are saying no to vitamin K shots for their newborns, and experts warn babies could be at serious risk.

A study published Dec. 8 in JAMA found that refusal of vitamin K, a shot given shortly after birth to prevent dangerous bleeding, has skyrocketed in recent years.

Researchers reviewed medical records for more than 5 million infants born in 403 hospitals nationwide between 2017 and 2024. In all, about 4% of babies, roughly 200,000, did not receive the shot. 

Refusal climbed from under 3% in 2017 to over 5% in 2024, with the sharpest increases seen after the COVID pandemic.

“The increase is not surprising, but the degree to which it did increase did catch me off guard,” study author Dr. Kristan Scott, a neonatologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told NBC News.

Vitamin K is not a vaccine. It’s a supplement used to help a baby’s blood clot. 

Babies are born with very low vitamin K levels. Without the shot, they are more than 80 times more likely to have dangerous bleeding, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Bleeding can happen anytime up to six months of age and may appear as bruising, internal bleeding, or, in the most severe cases, brain bleeding that can cause disability or death.

“We are creating a population of newborns who are at risk of bleeding,” Scott said.

“Bleeding into the brain is what we really worry about, essentially a stroke,” he explained. “That can ultimately cause death.”

Experts suspect online misinformation and confusion between the vitamin K shot and vaccines may underlie the trend.

“Parents are equating vitamin K injections to vaccines,” Dr. Tiffany McKee-Garrett told NBC News. She’s a neonatologist at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, who was not involved in the study.

Some countries offer oral vitamin K instead, but doctors say it’s less reliable and in some cases, must be given multiple times. The vitamin K shot works with one dose.

Vitamin K deficiency is preventable “so we shouldn’t be seeing it at all,” said Dr. Ivan Hand, neonatologist at NYC Health + Hospitals in Brooklyn.

Doctors expect to see a rise in bleeding events if refusal continues.

“These treatments have been so effective that people don’t understand the consequences. They have never seen babies with severe bleeding, so they think it doesn’t exist,” Hand said. “But you don’t see it because we are treating these kids.”

More information

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has more on why newborns need the vitamin K shot at birth.

SOURCE: NBC News, Dec. 8, 2025