podcast
Chasing Life
All over the world, there are people who are living extraordinary lives, full of happiness and health – and with hardly any heart disease, cancer or diabetes. Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been on a decades-long mission to understand how they do it, and how we can all learn from them. Scientists now believe we can even reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s dementia, and in fact grow sharper and more resilient as we age. Sanjay is a dad – of three teenage daughters, he is a doctor - who operates on the brain, and he is a reporter with more than two decades of experience - who travels the earth to uncover and bring you the secrets of the happiest and healthiest people on the planet – so that you too, can Chase Life.
Denmark's Vaccine Lessons for America
Chasing Life
Mar 3, 2026
US health officials have recently reduced the childhood vaccine schedule, taking cues from Denmark's leaner approach. Dr. Sanjay Gupta travels to Copenhagen to understand why some Americans think Denmark's model is worth copying.
Producer & Showrunner: Amanda Sealy
Medical Writer: Andrea Kane
Senior Producer: Dan Bloom
Technical Director: Dan Dzula
Episode Transcript
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:00:00
'Welcome to a special edition of Chasing Life. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, overhauled the childhood vaccine schedule. They are now recommending fewer vaccines for most American children. Now, one of the ideas behind this was to model it after other developed nations, in particular Denmark being the example. So today, I'm going to take you along on a special reporting trip I recently took to see if what works in Denmark could, in fact, work here in the United States. We'll head to Copenhagen right after the break. This should hardly be controversial. Six-month-old Sylvester is getting his second dose of vaccines. Mom's decision to vaccinate him was entirely voluntary. Like almost everyone here in Denmark, she opted in. In America today, the conversation is very different.
'Dr. Joel Warsh, Doctors Debate Vaccines - Uncovering the Truth from the Noise
00:01:09
You're just getting more and more vaccines. Logic would state that at some point, there's gonna be a breaking point.
'Candace Owens, Candace - This Is Why I Choose Not To Vaccinate My Kids
00:01:15
When my husband and I got together, I'm like, we're not vaccinating our kids, and he's like, what?
'Gavin de Becker, Joe Rogan Experience - Gavin de Becker Questions the Safety of Ingredients in Childhood Vaccines
00:01:17
Here is what's in your childhood vaccines right now, gelatin from boiled pigskin.
'Clayton Morris, Redacted w Clayton Morris - Holy SMOKES! They JUST admitted the truth about childhood vaccines
00:01:24
We still haven't done the science. That's just like remarkable to me. So let's just inject our children here.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:01:30
There are some massive changes happening to the childhood vaccine schedule in the United States. And one of the goals is to make the United States' vaccine schedule more similar to peer nations. Peer nations like here in Denmark, a country of six million people, a country with universal healthcare, a country, with a lot of trust, and a country that gives the fewest doses on their childhood vaccine schedule. So the question for a lot people is, can they do in the United States what they've been doing here in Denmark? Earlier this year, the U.S. Government stopped recommending six vaccines for children.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. US Secretary of Health and Human Services
00:02:13
We took the vaccines that are the vaccines that other countries get, our peer nations in Europe. One of the things that they're convinced of from experience in science is that if you add too many vaccines to the schedule, that uptake goes down.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:02:29
American health officials declined our request for an interview. Leaders of the movement to make America healthy again say that giving kids fewer vaccines will increase trust in the vaccines they do get. So will those changes lead to more people than vaccinating their children? That's the hypothesis we've come here to test. Edith and Kenneth, both 35 years old, are new parents, very new parents. Well, first of all, congratulations.
Edith, Mom
00:03:01
Thank you.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:03:01
And how old now? Thirteen hours?
Edith, Mom
00:03:06
I think so. Yeah. Little bit still cloudy.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:03:08
Yeah, I bet. How is the whole process here of delivering a baby, you know, for people who don't live in Denmark, what's it like?
Edith, Mom
00:03:16
It's been a really good experience. It's just very easy.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:03:21
And, all covered. I mean, this is a nationalized health care system, so everything is, you're not gonna walk home with any bills.
Edith, Mom
00:03:27
Not at all.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:03:28
Do you worry about vaccines at all?
Edith, Mom
00:03:31
I think with COVID there came a little bit of kind of like a worry, not that it was big enough that I didn't take the vaccine, but in general, no. If they advise it, I would take it.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:03:49
'Edith's confidence in that advice has built on a foundation of positive experiences with Denmark's health system. Denmark has long recommended fewer childhood vaccines than the United States. Babies here leave the hospital without any shots. By the time they're 12 years old, most Danish children have gotten vaccines against 10 diseases. Now compare that to the United states, until recently American officials recommended children get vaccinated for 17 diseases. Now six of those are still available, but no longer recommended. Hepatitis A and B, meningitis, rotavirus, flu, and COVID-19. Some of those like hepatitis B are still a serious threat in certain parts of America, but not in Denmark. About six in every 100,000 Americans are diagnosed every year with chronic hepatitis b. Compare that to less than two per 100,00 in Denmark, That means around 18,000 Americans diagnosed every year, compared to about 100 in Denmark. Fundamentally, this is a story about trust in the medical system. So we've decided to come to one of the biggest hospitals in Copenhagen to meet one of the most trusted doctors in Denmark So this is a referral hospital.
Dr. Jens Lundgren, Professor of Viral Diseases, University of Copenhagen
00:05:09
That's right. If the condition is very serious or they feel that it actually warrants more expertise to handle, they would then transfer the patient in here.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:05:21
Dr. Jens Lundgren sits on the panel that decides which vaccines to give Denmark's children. Did it surprise you when you heard that the United States is trying to emulate their vaccine schedule on Denmark?
Dr. Jens Lundgren, Professor of Viral Diseases, University of Copenhagen
00:05:35
Yeah, I certainly didn't see that coming. You cannot just take what has been carefully thought through in one geographical location and just extrapolate that and generalize that.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:05:50
I think part of the reason that they emulate Denmark is because Denmark has the fewest vaccines on the schedule.
Dr. Jens Lundgren, Professor of Viral Diseases, University of Copenhagen
00:05:56
But you see, that's not a good argument, right? So why do you want to condense your vaccine program against the fewest vaccine? You want to have the right vaccines for the public health that you have in your population. I mean, that's just common sense in my mind. And you have a problem in managing a measles outbreak that continues to evolve.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:06:19
Hundreds of cases of measles in a single state now, and we've had several measles outbreaks.
Dr. Jens Lundgren, Professor of Viral Diseases, University of Copenhagen
00:06:23
You don't need my degree or my expertise to say there's something fundamentally wrong.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:06:29
You believe these vaccines that we're talking about on the childhood vaccine schedule, you believe they are safe and effective.
Dr. Jens Lundgren, Professor of Viral Diseases, University of Copenhagen
00:06:35
Correct.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:06:36
That's not the concern here.
Dr. Jens Lundgren, Professor of Viral Diseases, University of Copenhagen
00:06:37
That's the debate here.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:06:38
So what is it fundamentally about?
Dr. Jens Lundgren, Professor of Viral Diseases, University of Copenhagen
00:06:40
We have come to realize that it's entirely based on trust.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:06:45
Trust.
Dr. Jens Lundgren, Professor of Viral Diseases, University of Copenhagen
00:06:45
The trust. Parents need to trust when we come with a new vaccine into the program, they need to trust that that's very sensible to do. And they would therefore adhere to that.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:06:58
Lundgren and his colleagues are now considering adding another vaccine, the one for chickenpox. But we keep coming back to that word: Trust. The polling shows it. Most Danes trust their government. Of the world's most advanced economies, it ranks near the top. And here's the United States. Dead last. Just 28% of Americans trust the government. We've come here to do a medical story, but in some ways this is a cultural story.
Dr. Jens Lundgren, Professor of Viral Diseases, University of Copenhagen
00:07:25
It's a cultural.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:07:26
And not just about vaccines but about trust and about attitudes and things like that.
Dr. Jens Lundgren, Professor of Viral Diseases, University of Copenhagen
00:07:37
Absolutely.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:07:37
'Up next, what really sets Denmark apart. In the United States, trust and vaccine information from the CDC has dropped 12 percentage points since the beginning of the second Trump administration. Danes' trust in government goes far beyond vaccines. Even after parents leave the hospital, child-rearing looks a whole lot different here. We've come to visit two and a half month old Esther. Of course, we expected to find her inside the house, given how cold it is, but instead here she is in a stroller outside, freezing cold temperatures. You'll see this everywhere in Denmark. Parents swear by the fresh air for their heavily swaddled babies. The family is waiting for a home health nurse to arrive, who will come, free of charge, five to six times during the baby's first year of life.
Edith, Mom
00:08:39
Oh yeah. Hi, Ezzy.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:08:43
Soon, Baby Esther wakes from her nap and it's time for her exam. I have to say just, you know, visiting Denmark to see Esther outside. That was quite striking. I mean, it's freezing cold outside.
Edith, Mom
00:08:59
It's not even as cold now as it has been.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:09:01
And what is that parental leave here in Denmark?
Edith, Mom
00:09:05
So my first two parental leaves were 12 months each with full payment.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:09:10
And then you show up as well.
Signe, Home Health Nurse
00:09:11
Yeah.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:09:12
Five to six times a year.
Signe, Home Health Nurse
00:09:13
Yeah, the first year.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:09:15
The first year. Yeah. And what is the purpose of your visit?
Signe, Home Health Nurse
00:09:18
My main purpose is to check up on the child, to see if the child is developing and is attaching to the parents.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:09:28
What I'm struck by is Denmark is so different than the United States. You're here, parental leave, nationalized health care system.
Kenneth, Dad
00:09:36
Obviously there's a lot of people in the U.S. who are not that fond of the government actually running anything at all.
Edith, Mom
00:09:42
And I think it's easy to implement something like a more simple vaccine program seen visiting us here, because it's a smaller country. I think that in many ways you can't compare the US and Denmark, right? It's two completely different countries, right, and it's run differently and politically, governmentally. But I would want for the people in the US to have some of the benefits that we experience, because I do believe it benefits me as a parent. I believe it works. So I basically trust the system right that they have decided it for me, and it works.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:10:22
Vaccination isn't the only reason that outbreaks are less common here in Denmark. The National Serum Institute, or SSI, here in Copenhagen keeps meticulous medical records of all Danish citizens, and that helps predict and even prevent outbreaks. What makes Denmark's superpower this data tracking?
Lone Simonsen, Professor of Population Health Scinces, Roskilde University
00:10:41
Well, the underlying superpower comes from the Social Security number introduction in the 1960s. And from there, the linking at this place where you're looking here, we track the disease incidents from all the physicians. Whenever someone is tested for something, it goes into one database. Whenever someone's vaccinated, it goes in to one database, it doesn't go to all kinds of places. It's one place. And then it's quite doable to link all this together.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:11:12
Americans might be uncomfortable with that level of tracking, but it is one of the many factors that makes the Danish system work.
Mom Learning Group
00:11:19
If you feel like one side is soft...
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:11:21
Community bonds here are tight.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:11:23
'This is just one of many places new moms gather to meet and learn with their new babies. Hello everybody. Your babies are very cute. Do you all have trust in the vaccine system here in Denmark by show of hands? Letting you know that every single person raised their hand. Would that trust go down if they added more vaccines? No. So adding more vaccines does not lead to less or more trust. After spending a week here, it's easy to see why American officials would want to emulate Denmark. It's often ranked as one of the happiest countries in the world, and it's easy to see reflections of the movements to make America healthy again here. Danes emphasize personal health to ward off disease, and they are skeptical of too much medical intervention. But the success of the Danish system is based on so much more than the number of vaccines parents give their children. Nationalized health care, high trust, and a lot of co-dependence on one another. Edith, the new mom, she also seems wise beyond her years.
Mom Learning Group
00:12:42
We have so much trust in the system that if they say yes, then I would do it. I wouldn't understand why there wouldn't be trust. I think it would be the entire system that would need to be looked at.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
00:12:59
'I wanna say I really enjoyed my trip to Denmark. I understand how important it is to make the right decision for your children. But the question is, can what they do in Denmark really work here in the United States? Whatever your thought is on this, make sure to have conversations about vaccines with your pediatrician. Also, I want to let you know, you can watch the video version of this story. It's pretty remarkable. It's now streaming on the CNN app, or you can go to CNN.com/watchformore. We'll be back next week to answer your health questions. And as always, if there's something you wanna know, reach out, record a voice memo, email it to pagingdrgupta@cnn.com. That's pagingdrgupta@cnn.com or give us a call, 470-396-0832 and leave a message. Thanks so much for listening.
