Care providers at Boone Health are concerned that fewer parents are allowing vitamin K shots to be administered to their newborn children.
Misinformation has been one of the sources complicating this situation, according to a Boone Health news release.
“In 2024 the vitamin K refusal rate was 5.18% (nationally), and back in 2017 it was only 2.9% — the reasons that we see for the most part are parents who don’t want anything ‘unnatural,’ they want nature to take its course,” said Lana Zerrer, the chief medical officer at Boone Health.
In 2025, Boone Health reported that 97.3% of newborns received the vitamin K shot. In 2026, that number has risen slightly to 97.5%, yet Boone Health and its obstetrics team would like 100% of newborns to have that shot every year.
More than 1,400 babies were born at Boone Health last year.
At MU Health Care, 3,038 babies have been born during the past year at the health network’s hospitals in Columbia and Jefferson City, and 98.5% of those newborns received vitamin K shots, according to data provided by the organization.
Vitamin K is an important part of keeping newborns safe from excessive bleeding and specifically helps the liver make clotting factors, proteins used to clot blood.
Babies are typically born with low levels of vitamin K putting them at a higher risk for unpredictable internal bleeding, called Vitamin K Deficiency Bleeding.
“They’re not getting vitamin K from their mothers — breast milk has a very low concentration of vitamin K, not enough for a newborn,” said Zerrer.
Additionally, Zerrer said that all newborns are born with vitamin K deficiency, and points out that the infant mortality rate before vitamin K shots began, around the 1960s, was much higher.
“I have experienced numerous infants over the decades with devastating bleeding that cannot be stopped, often leading to death or long term disabilities,” said Timothy O’Connor, a pediatrician at Boone Health hospital who cares for the babies in the NICU.
Babies are 81 times more likely to develop Vitamin K Deficiency Bleeding without the shot, according to the release.
Zerrer said that among babies who develop Vitamin K Deficiency Bleeding there is a really high rate of bleeding in the brain, called intracranial hemorrhage.
“If an infant gets an intracranial hemorrhage there’s a high rate of mortality with it — the rate of mortality is 14-20%.”
Zerrer also said that infants who don’t die from this version of Vitamin K Deficiency Bleeding have a high rate of developmental delay and neurological disabilities.
“When the shot is given the rate is nearly zero,” Zerrer said. “So this is a preventable problem, and the problem itself can be absolutely devastating to that infant in that family.”
More information regarding vitamin K shots can be found at the CDC website.
