BRIEF: Review of HHS Agenda under RFK Jr.

The “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) announcement, championed by RFK Jr., claims to address major health crises but leans heavily on misleading implications, decontextualized claims, and conspiracy-tinged rhetoric. Although it spotlights genuine concerns, such as chronic disease and medication use, its framing guides the audience to see the same drivers as RFK Jr. has suggested.

The order repeats common claims that misrepresent facts about autism, chronic illness, and pharmaceuticals. The omission of critical context leaves the audience to connect conditions to unrelated events. Many of the approaches RFK Jr. and other “wellness” influencers appear to use overlap with methods used by private industries and state actors to influence the public.

Age-old tactics perfected by the tobacco industry, such as casting doubt on sound science while never proving anything and implying conflicts of interest where none exist, are all too familiar.

Most troubling is the way this announcement sidesteps well-documented causes of poor health outcomes among children in the U.S. Child poverty is a major driver of childhood illness and worse outcomes later in life.

We have decades of research, both in public health and economics, that show how poverty is associated with poor health throughout children’s lives. The strength of the evidence is just overwhelming.

For example, pregnant women living in poverty have less access to health care, healthy food, and other key health influences. Research tells us that when their children are born, those kids end up less healthy.

After birth, kids who are living in poverty are more likely to endure less safe, less clean neighborhoods, and lack access to high quality health care and nutrition. These deficits make it harder to do well in school, to get good jobs, and on it goes. The hardships suffered by these children are due in part to the intergenerational transmission of poverty—and as a result the cycle is likely to continue for their own kids.

— Jeff Sobotko, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

As a wealthy nation, allowing children to live in poverty is a choice. Instead of addressing that, this order foreshadows a grim outlook. We may expect sensationalist theories that waste money, the re-litigation of extensively studied questions, and misleading presentation of data and statistics that cast doubt in the minds of an increasing number of US citizens.

The annotated executive order can be seen below.

Policy Commentary