The United States Secretary of Health and Social Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., presented a strategy report by the Make America Healthy Again commission intended to combat chronic infantile diseases.
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The Trump administration published a large strategy on Tuesday to improve children’s health. It provides for a wide range of executive actions and political reforms to combat an increase in chronic diseases.
By announcing the report, the Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., called chronic disease in children “an existential crisis for our country” and said that the 128 recommendations of the report are “historic and unprecedented”.
“There has never been any effort like this in all government agencies,” he said.
The Make America Healthy Again commission, led by Kennedy, has identified four potential engines behind the increase in chronic disease rates in children, including poor diet, chemical exposure, lack of physical activity and chronic stress, as well as “over -mediation” – which the Commission describes as “a worrying trend in children’s overexraction”.
The report has attracted mixed reactions of researchers and defenders working in public health, who note that its objectives are in contradiction with the other movements of the recent Trump administration. These include reductions in financing food assistance, Medicaid programs and scientific research, as well as the push of Secretary Kennedy to changes in vaccine policy, which could all undermine public health.
“How can we” make America in good health unless we renew our commitment to ensure access to food for children “, and other Americans, asks Eric Mitchell, president of the Alliance to end hunger, in a statement.
“While administration officials regularly praise the importance of nutrition,” they worked with the Congress to adopt a plan that will push millions of people out of federal food aid, known as Snap, he says.
Susan Mayne, epidemiologist of the Yale University School of Public Health and former head of the Food and Drug Administration, says that there is a consensus that “we must approach chronic diseases in all our population, including children”, and it accepts the time to take measures.
The Maha report understands “many good discussions on the things they want to do,” said Mayne. “But the plan to know how to execute it and the resources so that it is done is in fact in the opposite direction. And that concerns me.”
Approach the diet and children’s exercise habits
The report notes that 60% of the calories that American children consume come from highly processed foods – which often contain an excess of salt, refined starch and sugar – and it calls an educational campaign to promote the food directives of the government, which should be updated in the coming weeks. The campaign will focus on the consumption of more whole foods and less processed products.
Mayne says it is a good idea to develop a standard definition for ultra-treble foods, but says that we need more than a definition.
“What are the steps we are going to take to eat less?” She wonders. “There are measures that they should take immediately to continue trying to reduce things like excess sodium, excess sugar and excess saturated fat in these ultra -processed foods.”
The strategy calls for new research on nutrition and prevention of chronic diseases and the development of a standard definition of ultra-transformed food. He indicates that the government will remove restrictions on entire milk sales in schools and will help states limit the purchase of unhealthy items with social benefits.
The Maha Commission underlines “unprecedented levels of inactivity”, among children and their strategy calls for a partnership with the Council of the President of Sport, Physical Form and Nutrition, to help States and Schools “restore” the presidential fitness test and to promote more physical activity in school units.
In addition, the plan is to launch an initiative of education and awareness of the screen, one of the causes of inactivity, which will be led by the general surgeon. (To date, the Trump administration has not appointed a general surgeon.
“I am very happy to see that they have identified the diet and physical activity as two of the best health problems in the United States,” said Lindsey Smith Taillie, nutrition professor at the Gillings School of Public Health at UNC Chapel Hill. “But this report was lacking in real and significant action that would help Americans solve our problems.”
Chemical exposure reported, but little pressure on pesticides
A previous report Maha, published in May, underlined the potential damage to chemical exposure and noted that children can be more vulnerable to these damages. He listed a range of chemicals, including PFAs, phthalates, bisphenols, microplastics and chemicals used in farms to kill pests and weeds.
The new strategy report indicates that “children are exposed to an increasing number of synthetic chemicals, some of which have been linked to development problems and chronic diseases”.
This is a problem that hosted parts of the Maha movement. As a long -standing environmental lawyer, Kennedy frequently talked about the use of agricultural pesticides and herbicides. During the 2024 presidential campaign, he made statements to “prohibit” certain agricultural chemicals which are already restricted in other countries.
But the report provides for few changes on pesticide regulation.
The strategy requires a more status approach to assess the current regulations that govern the use of agricultural chemicals: “The current regulatory framework must be continuously evaluated to ensure that chemicals and others do not interact a threat.”
Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, pediatrician and professor at the Boston College, and director of the global public health program and the good common ratings according to which “the report contains no recommendations on how to reduce children’s exposure to toxic chemicals in food other than food and heavy metals in childhood formulas.”
The environmental working group, said in a statement, That the Maha Original report published in May mentioned “the health risks of pesticides, and the fact that they are at” alarming “levels in some pregnant children and women”.
Tuesday’s strategy report does not have such a language.
“It seems that lobbyists of the pesticide industry had rolled the agenda of the Maha Commission,” said EWG president Ken Cook.
The group indicates that agrifood lobbying efforts urging the administration to “move away” from anti-peticide rhetoric.
Meanwhile, the American Farm Bureau published a supporting declaration The Maha strategy. “We appreciate the commission’s desire to meet farmers across the country, to hear our concerns and to develop intelligent solutions,” said AFB president ZIPPY DUVALL.
A call to a new “vaccine executive”
The strategy also calls for the National House House Policy Council and the HHS to develop a new vaccine framework, which can mean reorganizing the vaccine calendar, the list of vaccinations that children should receive at specific ages. The calendar is developed by infectious illness experts and a committee of expert advisers to the CDC, a group that Kennedy recently replaced by its own choices, including certain criticisms of vaccines.
The strategic plan calls to fight against injury to the vaccine and to ensure “medical freedom”, which could suggest in this context to support people a personal choice on the vaccination of their children.
Kennedy’s recent assets in this area, bringing together that new actions can undermine a uniform and uniform approach to vaccination. He recently pushed the director of the Susan Monarez prevention control and prevention centers and has set new limits to access to the cocovid vaccine.
The American Lung Association notes that the report “puts the calendar of the infantile vaccines in question, which is wary of distrust in the established and science -based vaccine infrastructure”.
“Community immunity by vaccination keeps children at school and helps protect our most vulnerable,” he said in a statement. “Vaccines are a cornerstone of public health and distrust sewn in this report endangers the lives of children in danger.”
A large mixture of ideas
All in all, the report contains 128 proposals, covering research, policy changes and regulations, public awareness campaigns and suggestions for public-private partnerships.
But Landrigan of Boston College says that he does not present “any type of full plan to improve the health of American children”.
“Overall, I would describe the report as presenting a meli-melo of very unequal, poorly designed and disjointed recommendations which reflects the concerns of secretary Kennedy and few others,” he said.
Other criticisms have noted that the objectives of the report are compromised by the recent movements of Trump administration policy.
For example, the report calls on the environmental protection agency to seek the impact of air pollution on children’s health. However, as the American Lung Association notes in a press release, the EPA is Actively elimination His research arm and “work to reduce critical cleaning guarantees of clean air and allow the main polluters to bypass the requirements that limit emissions – emissions that worsen asthma and other chronic pulmonary conditions in children”.
