Newborn vitamin K refusals jumped 57% in six months

Vitamin K rarely makes news. This year it has, for the wrong reason: fewer newborns are getting the shot that has prevented a specific, well-understood kind of bleeding disorder for more than 60 years.

The data

Truveta, a health data and analytics company, reviewed records covering more than 140 million people and isolated 1,026,375 births to 825,599 mothers between January 2019 and June 2026. In an exclusive analysis reported by Reuters on September 1, 2026, the company found that the share of US newborns not receiving a vitamin K shot within a day of birth climbed from 5.2% at the start of 2026 to 8.1% by the end of June, a 57% increase in six months, and roughly two and a half times the average refusal rate from 2019 through 2024.

This is a real-world records review, not a randomized trial, so it cannot say why any individual family declined. But the scale, over a million births, and the consistency of the trend across the first half of the year make the direction hard to dispute.

Why the shot exists

Vitamin K is needed to activate several of the proteins that let blood clot. It crosses the placenta poorly, and breast milk supplies very little of it, so a newborn arrives with close to none in reserve, at the same time its liver-based clotting system is still immature. Left uncorrected, that gap can produce vitamin K deficiency bleeding, historically called hemorrhagic disease of the newborn, which can appear anywhere from the first day of life to several months later. The late form, appearing between roughly two weeks and six months, is the most dangerous because it frequently bleeds into the brain rather than somewhere visible like the umbilicus or gut.

A single intramuscular dose at birth prevents nearly all of it. The American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended it since 1961, and its 2022 policy statement in Pediatrics puts a number on what skipping it does: infants who do not receive the shot are 81 times more likely than those who do to develop late vitamin K deficiency bleeding in their first six months. The CDC states that roughly one in five infants with the condition dies, and many of the rest are left with permanent brain damage from the bleed.

Why refusals are rising

Reporting on the trend, including the Reuters analysis and separate coverage of individual cases, points to a few overlapping causes. Some parents object to any intervention at birth as a matter of philosophy, wanting as unmedicated a start as possible for their baby. Others are reached by social media posts that lump the vitamin K shot in with vaccines simply because both are injections given in the newborn period, even though vitamin K prophylaxis does not involve the immune system at all and is not a vaccine. The acceleration in 2026 coincides with a January federal decision dropping the recommendation for the newborn hepatitis B vaccine and several other standard childhood vaccines from the routine schedule; Reuters reports that the broader climate of vaccine hesitancy appears to be spilling over onto a shot that has nothing to do with immunization.

None of that changes what the shot does. It replaces a vitamin the baby cannot yet get enough of on its own, for the several months it takes diet and gut bacteria to close the gap.

Getting enough vitamin K, past infancy

Outside the newborn period, vitamin K is one of the easier nutrients to get from food, mostly from leafy greens and a few plant oils. Amounts below are per realistic serving, ordered by density:

• Spinach, cooked, 1 cup: 889 mcg
• Natto (fermented soybeans), 3 oz (85 g): 850 mcg
• Kale, cooked, 1 cup: 544 mcg
• Mustard greens, cooked, ½ cup: 415 mcg
• Beet greens, cooked, ½ cup: 350 mcg
• Swiss chard, raw, 1 cup: 299 mcg
• Turnip greens, cooked, ½ cup: 280 mcg
• Parsley, raw, ¼ cup: 260 mcg
• Broccoli, cooked, 1 cup: 220 mcg
• Brussels sprouts, cooked, 1 cup: 219 mcg
• Collard greens, raw, chopped, 1 cup: 166 mcg
• Cabbage, cooked, 1 cup: 165 mcg
• Asparagus, cooked, 1 cup: 91 mcg
• Kiwi, 1 cup: 73 mcg
• Romaine lettuce, raw, 1 cup: 48 mcg
• Edamame, cooked, 1 cup: 41 mcg
• Green beans, cooked, ½ cup: 30 mcg
• Soybean oil, 1 tablespoon: 26 mcg

How much you need

Vitamin K intakes are set as Adequate Intakes (AI) rather than an RDA, because there is not enough data to calculate an average requirement. From the National Academies, via the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements:

• Infants 0–6 months: 2.0 mcg
• Infants 7–12 months: 2.5 mcg
• Children 1–3 years: 30 mcg
• Children 4–8 years: 55 mcg
• Children 9–13 years: 60 mcg
• Teens 14–18 years, both sexes: 75 mcg
• Adult men, 19 and up: 120 mcg
• Adult women, 19 and up, including pregnancy and breastfeeding: 90 mcg

No tolerable upper intake level has been set for vitamin K from food or supplements.

Too little, and too much

Deficiency beyond infancy is uncommon in otherwise healthy people, because vitamin K is widespread in food and the gut's own bacteria contribute some. It shows up mainly in people with fat malabsorption, since vitamin K needs dietary fat to be absorbed: celiac disease, Crohn's disease, cystic fibrosis, bile duct obstruction, or after bowel surgery. Long courses of broad-spectrum antibiotics can also reduce it, by killing the gut bacteria that produce some of the body's supply. The signs are easy bruising, bleeding that takes longer than usual to stop, and in more severe cases blood in urine or stool.

Too much is not a demonstrated problem at ordinary or even fairly high intakes, which is why no upper limit exists. The real caution applies to a specific group: anyone on warfarin or a similar vitamin K antagonist. Because these drugs work by blocking vitamin K's role in clotting, a sudden change in intake, up or down, can throw off years of careful dosing. The standard advice for that group is not to avoid vitamin K, but to keep intake roughly consistent week to week and tell the prescribing doctor before making a deliberate change.

Tracking it in AIM

AIM does not track vitamin K as standard, so add it as a custom metric: give it a name, a unit (mcg) and a daily target of 90 mcg (120 mcg for men), and it is estimated on every meal from then on, pinned to your cards or left behind "more".

Estimates from a photograph carry real uncertainty for micronutrients, because content varies with soil, cultivar, storage and cooking in ways no image contains. Treat the week as meaningful and any single day as approximate.