About

Paul A. Offit is the Maurice R. Hilleman Chair of Vaccinology and serves as the Chairman of the Therapeutic Standards Committee at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He is a faculty member in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, where he is involved in research and education related to vaccines and immunology. His research interests include rotavirus, rotavirus vaccine, intestinal immunity, and vaccine safety. Offit's work has included studying the genetics of rotavirus virulence, the neutralization phenotype of rotavirus, and the protein-specificities of rotavirus-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes, which contributed to the development of the bovine-human reassortant rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, licensed by the FDA in 2006. He devotes his professional time to running the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, an international center that creates educational materials for parents and healthcare professionals and operates on an endowment. His publications include research on vaccine safety, communication about vaccines, and the development of rotavirus vaccines.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Virology

Selected publications

• Changed Recommendations for COVID-19 Vaccines for Children and Pregnant Women

  JAMA · 2025-06-13 · 7 citations

  articleSenior author

  This Viewpoint discusses recent actions by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr to rescind the recommendation for COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women, which goes against years of established processes for how vaccines are managed.

  PublisherDOI

• Vaccines and Your Family

  Columbia University Press eBooks · 2024-10-09

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Efficacy of Rotavirus Vaccines

  The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal · 2024-03-20 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  *From the University of Pennsylvania, Doylestown, Pennsylvania †Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ‡Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Accepted for publication February 26, 2024 The authors have no funding or conflicts of interest to disclose. Address for correspondence: Stanley A. Plotkin, MD, 4650 Wismer Rd., Doylestown, PA 18902. E-mail: [email protected].

  PublisherDOI

• Bivalent Covid-19 Vaccines — A Cautionary Tale

  New England Journal of Medicine · 2023-01-11 · 111 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Rotavirus Vaccines

  Elsevier eBooks · 2023-01-01

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Vaccine Safety

  Elsevier eBooks · 2023-01-01

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• COVID-19 Vaccines in Young Children—Reassuring Evidence for Parents

  JAMA Pediatrics · 2023-01-23 · 7 citations

  letterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Atsuyuki Watanabe, MD; Ryoma Kani; Masao Iwagami, MD, PhD; Hisato Takagi, MD, PhD; Jun Yasuhara, MD; Toshiki Kuno, MD, PhD

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Measles and Autism

  2021-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The development of COVID-19 vaccines in the United States: Why and how so fast?

  Vaccine · 2021-03-26 · 70 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• On the Shoulders of Giants — From Jenner’s Cowpox to mRNA Covid Vaccines

  New England Journal of Medicine · 2021-03-20 · 27 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  On the Shoulders of Giants The FDA recently authorized two mRNA vaccines for the prevention of Covid-19. Clearance of this hurdle represents the most recent in a series of advances in the realm of ...

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01AI026251

  NIH · $4.0M · 2005

• NIH Grant R21AI026251

  NIH · $364k · 2001

• NIH Grant K04AI000889

  NIH · $295k · 1993

Frequent coauthors

• Lawrence David Scahill

  1584 shared

• Alexander Westphal

  Yale University

  1420 shared

• Corey Ray-Subramanian

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  1135 shared

• Fred R. Volkmar

  Yale University

  932 shared

• Jessica L. Roesser

  University of Rochester

  852 shared

• Kelly Macy

  University of Vermont

  846 shared

• Cheryl Smith Gabig

  Lehman College

  716 shared

• Giacomo Vivanti

  Drexel University

  711 shared