The tools needed to prevent and monitor infectious diseases are on the minds of local public health officials as respiratory virus season approaches. They have expressed alarm federal authorities have not yet issued recommendations for COVID vaccinations this year, and there’s fear that under vaccine skeptic Robert Kennedy Jr. , the US health secretary, the federal recommendations might not be based in credible science.

Massachusetts health officials had already discussed the possibility of coordinating vaccine recommendations with neighboring states, rather than relying on federal health agencies for guidance. But in the wake of the meeting in Providence, officials said, participating states also considered how they could work collectively to maintain effective disease tracking and emergency response services in the face of the Trump administration’s damaging funding cuts and changing health priorities .

A gathering in Providence of public health officials from eight states this week could lead to a new regional collaboration positioned to supplant the Trump administration’s oversight of some major public health services.

“We all are committed to evidence-based recommendations,” Robbie Goldstein, Massachusetts’ public health commissioner and a participant in the meetings, told the Globe Thursday. “It is not a question about, ‘Are we breaking from the federal government?’ It is, ‘How do we continue to do this thing that we’ve always done?’ which is to use science and evidence to drive our recommendations.”

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Goldstein emphasized the meetings were not specifically held to plot a separate path from federal authorities. The goal, he said, was to consider the future and structure of public health services. But the conversations were in part a response to the Trump administration’s public health policies, he said.

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The states have not made any vaccination policy changes based on the discussions so far, nor have they decided on a coordinated plan. But, the meeting itself marks a step toward independence from federal health agencies that a few years ago would have seemed unthinkable. Simply gathering each state’s public health leadership in one place is unusual.

Leaders of the public health departments of every New England state except New Hampshire, as well as New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, attended the meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday, Rhode Island’s Department of Health confirmed.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the New Hampshire’s Department of Health and Human Resources said the state coordinates with national, regional, and local public health agencies in other ways.

The federal Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment.

Massachusetts is a national leader in the growing effort to maintain public health standards during the Trump administration, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota vaccine expert working to compensate for Trump administration policies.

“They’re doing things right now that no other state is doing,” Osterholm said. “Their leadership is important not just for the Northeast but for the whole country.”

Goldstein has noted Massachusetts policymakers anticipated the possibility of a second Trump term and began preparing for federal funding cuts to public health programs well before the presidential election.

For decades, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been a reliable, nonpartisan coordinator of health information and guidance for the nation. States generally abide by the agency’s recommendations on who should receive which vaccinations. This year, though, delays in important vaccine recommendations and some decisions that seem guided more by ideology than science have rattled health and medical experts’ faith in the agency’s ability under Kennedy to provide credible guidance. Kennedy ousted this summer a trusted CDC advisory panel that helped shape the agency’s vaccine recommendations, replacing members with less experienced personnel, including some who openly share his skepticism toward vaccines.

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“When we have such dramatic changes at the CDC,” Goldstein said, “it’s important for us to really double down on our commitment to science and evidence based recommendations.”

States could shape their vaccination recommendations with guidance from professional medical societies instead of the CDC, Goldstein has said. A coordinated message from Northeast states would help push insurers to cover recommended vaccines, he said, and lessen confusion.

The other states participating in the Providence meetings were more circumspect about the event. A spokesperson from the Rhode Island health department said the meeting was simply an opportunity to discuss coordination and information sharing.

Yet states are beginning to take steps toward more independence. While the Supreme Court ruled more than a century ago that states can establish their own vaccination policies, many states have the CDC’s guidelines baked into law. That must change if states want to rely on recommendations from medical societies instead.

Governor Maura Healey introduced language in two supplemental budget bills this summer to give the state’s health commissioner more authority to set vaccine requirements for schools and ensure a state fund can continue to cover the cost of children’s vaccines.

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And, Rhode Island this year passed a law that grants pharmacists permission to administer COVID vaccines to children without federal approvals. Pennsylvania legislators expect to introduce a bill that would protect private insurance coverage for vaccines recommended by professional medical societies.

One of that bill’s sponsors, state Representative Arvind Venkat, a Pittsburgh Democrat, emphasized such legislation isn’t a vaccine mandate, but protects access to preventative measures grounded in science.

Nationally, the process of building a system for sharing scientific information about vaccinations independent from federal authorities is already underway.

As state public health leaders met in Providence Tuesday, the Vaccine Integrity Project, led by Osterholm, held a hour and a half virtual session to share information about the safety and efficacy of various flu, COVID, and RSV vaccines, mirroring the traditional function of the CDC advisory panel.

Also on Tuesday, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued recommendations for COVID vaccination for children, including that all children ages 6 months to 23 months should be fully vaccinated, saying they were vulnerable to severe cases of COVID. The recommendation, which relied heavily on the information gathered by the Vaccine Integrity Project, contradicted Kennedy’s recommendation that healthy children older than 6 months should not get the shot. It was the first time in 30 years the pediatrics organization meaningfully departed from federal guidance. Kennedy accused the organization of a “pay-to-play scheme,” saying it recommended the doses to benefit the pharmaceutical industry, and pointed to donations from some large pharma companies to a fund for children’s health the organization runs.

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“This attack on the integrity of pediatricians is unfortunate, but it does not change the facts,” said Dr. Susan Kressly, the pediatrician academy’s president, in a statement. “Our immunization recommendations are rooted in decades of peer-reviewed science by the nation’s leading health experts.”

There remain major obstacles to any effort to disentangle state vaccination policies from the federal government.

Osterholm’s Vaccine Integrity Project doesn’t have access to the unpublished studies, proprietary industry data, or ongoing trials without reported results the CDC can use to make vaccine recommendations.

Private insurers rely on CDC recommendations to decide which vaccines they cover, though some have indicated they would be open to considering other scientific authorities. Pharmacists and clinicians, though, depend on federal programs to give them liability protection if patients have serious adverse reactions to vaccines. These protections only cover vaccines approved by the CDC, said Brigid Groves, vice president for professional affairs with the American Pharmacists Association, a trade organization.

While the states that participated in this week’s assembly have no immediate plans to diverge from federal recommendations, a test may come soon. The CDC is overdue to issue COVID vaccine recommendations, and a meeting of the agency’s vaccine advisory committee is expected to happen in the coming weeks.

“So much of this is unknown,” Goldstein said. “We haven’t seen how they’re going to structure their presentations and what they’re going to use to justify a decision.”

Jason Laughlin can be reached at jason.laughlin@globe.com. Follow him @jasmlaughlin.