Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s Make America Healthy Again report was due to be released on August 12, by executive order. The release has been delayed due to scheduling difficulties. Kennedy plans to reveal is strategy for addressing the root causes of the health problems he sees facing America — poor nutrition and ultra-processed food, inactivity, pesticide and chemical use, and children receiving too many medicines and vaccines. Kennedy outlined these in the spring “MAHA Report.”
Per Politico, the Trump administration is already receiving pushback from competing factions—those concerned about pesticide use, for example, and agricultural groups not wanting them limited. Similarly, the food industry is prepared for limits on food dyes, but is concerned about added targets.
Defend Public Health, a grassroots volunteer group of thousands of healthcare providers, scientists, advocates and allies, has just issued its own report, Improving the Health of Americans Together: An evidence-based framework for addressing the root causes of illness in the U.S.
Food/Nutrition
The IHAT report, prepared by members of DPH’s Coordinating Committee, covers an array of science-based strategies designed to counter many of the distortions from Kennedy Jr. They cover a wide range of topics including nutrition and physical activity, from a broader, public health and science perspective. For example, “food” includes nutrition, food safety, and cuts to inspections under this administration, and access to healthy foods when there are so many food deserts.
Kennedy rails against ultra-processed grains, sugars, and fats, which he says account for over two-thirds of calories in a child’s diet. He says this “may play a significant role in childhood obesity, type 2 diabetes, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.” After pressure from Kennedy, who said that “sugar is poison,” Coca-Cola is changing to sweetening its cola with cane sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup, a move that nutritionists say won’t provide significant benefit.
Kennedy similarly has gone after dyes in Froot Loops and other foods. Elizabeth Jacobs, a retired epidemiologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona, put this brouhaha over Kennedy’s choices in perspective saying, “Why are we talking about dyes in Froot Loops or cane sugar in Coca Cola while the Trump Administration is cutting SNAP benefits, and 13 million children don’t know where their next meal is coming from?”
Thomas Galligan, principal scientist for food additives and supplements at the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest told FactCheck.org, ““We’re hearing all this rhetoric from RFK Jr. about how he wants to fix the food system, but then he’s making massive cuts within HHS and FDA that will directly impede his ability to fix the food system.”
Pandemic Preparedness
Strengthening pandemic preparedness is essential for our future. Yet Kennedy has falsely said that mRNA vaccines “fail to protect effectively” against COVID-19 and are unsafe.
He promoted a “let ‘er rip” approach to bird flu in poultry and cancelled a $760 million contract with Moderna for a human bird flu vaccine. We have no vaccine and are left totally unprotected should bird flu infect more people.
Vaccines
The MAHA report expresses concern over the number of vaccines children receive. As the IHAT report notes, children were not previously “healthy.” In fact, “statistics on childhood mortality show that, despite real problems, our children are vastly more likely to live to adulthood today than they were 75 years or more ago.”
The IHAT report describes the MAHA report section on vaccines as “particularly duplicitous and egregious.”
Some of Kennedy’s actions against vaccines will greatly harm millions of people, especially children. He has removed the COVID-19 vaccination from the CDC’s recommended immunization list for healthy children, despite it causing MIS and long Covid in many. Similarly, pregnant women are not able to get a COVID-19 vaccine, although they are at high risk of death or miscarriage from infection.
Kennedy has removed the seventeen experts on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing them with an anti-vaccine cadre of seven mostly unqualified individuals.
Similarly, he has planned to fire all sixteen members of the United States Preventive Services Task Force.
As Jacobs and Miranda Xaver, an assistant professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Pittsburgh, note in a new Op-Ed in The Hill, “Under the Affordable Care Act, the recommendations of both of these committees are required to be covered by private health insurance, as well as, in some cases, Medicaid and Medicare.” For now, the ACA must cover recommended vaccines and cancer screenings. By gutting these two committees, Kennedy will be able to severely weaken the ACA, something the Republicans have thus far not been able to do legislatively.
Last month, Kennedy said he was going to overhaul the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Some have concerns that weakening the protections will drive manufacturers out of the vaccine business.
This week, the prestigious Annals of Internal Medicine medical journal published a large Danish study that looked at 1.2 million Danish children over two decades and found no increased risk from vaccines containing aluminum and no increase in autoimmune, atopic or allergic, or neurodevelopmental disorders.
Kennedy challenged these findings on Trial Site News, which is rated as “a strong Pseudoscience source” by Media Bias/Fact Check based on “promoting misleading and false claims regarding Covid-19 vaccines.” He “described the research as ‘a deceitful propaganda stunt by the pharmaceutical industry,’” and demanded the journal retract the study, which they have refused to do. This type of demand — essentially censorship of an independent medical journal—was previously unheard of. But Kennedy has also proposed banning federal scientists from publishing in journals he doesn’t like, although they are leading journals (e.g., Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA).
In terms of Kennedy and vaccines, there is so much to write—from his fueling the measles epidemic by his anti-vax statements, to this week’s shooting at the CDC. The assailant, Patrick White, “reportedly motivated by anti-vaccine beliefs, fired more than 180 rounds at the Atlanta headquarters campus.” White reportedly blamed the Covid vaccine for his health problems. Kennedy had described the vaccine as the deadliest vaccine ever made.
Other Topics In IHAT Report
While exercise is important in both reports, DPH stresses that the social determinants of health—the economic and social factors, often related to poverty and discrimination–make exercise nearly impossible for millions.
Other topics in the IHAT report range from improving access to vaccines and health care, including medical, dental, and sexual and reproductive health care, to clean air. Pollution is a major contributor to asthma, chronic lung diseases, and cancer. Combatting scientific misinformation from the government and social media is a growing concern. As the government is scrubbing websites, formerly reliable sources of information have disappeared.
Guns are the leading cause of death for children and teens, yet Kennedy didn’t even mention gun violence in last spring’s MAHA report. Reducing gun violence in the country is critical in improving our physical and mental health. Other countries have achieved this; our politicians lack the will to do so.
Conclusion
Defend Public Health’s IHAT report is thoroughly researched and extensively referenced, a model for what a health planning report should look like. They don’t hold back, stating, “The HHS Secretary must be a person who respects expertise and has the humility to listen to scientists and healthcare professionals who provide critical analysis of health strategies for Americans.
All of the 17 dismissed members of ACIP should be reinstated, and the unqualified members of the committee appointed by Kennedy should be permanently removed. Further, all members of USPSTF should be returned to their roles.”
Defend Public Health concludes, “Secretary Kennedy is a threat to the health of every person in the United States. He must resign or be removed from office in order to improve the health of Americans together.”
