The Secretary for Health and Human Services heads up a new commission formed to tackle the ‘childhood chronic disease crisis.’
Immediately after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Feb. 13, he was tasked with heading up a commission primarily focused on childhood health.
Kennedy is the chairman of the new President’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission, created by President Donald Trump via executive order.
The commission directs executive departments and federal agencies to primarily advise the president on how to “address the childhood chronic disease crisis.”
It is tasked to explore contributing causes to childhood chronic diseases such as “the American diet, absorption of toxic material, medical treatments, lifestyle, environmental factors, government policies, food production techniques, electromagnetic radiation, and corporate influence or cronyism.”
The mandate aligns with Kennedy’s presidential campaign platform and his previous work at Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that he founded in 2007.
“I have prayed each morning for the past two decades for God to put me in a position to solve the childhood chronic disease epidemic and now, thanks to you Mr. President, we will make this promise a reality,” Kennedy said in a Feb. 13 statement.
Aside from the commission, as head of HHS, Kennedy will oversee a budget of $1.8 trillion for fiscal year 2025, the largest of any federal agency.
HHS oversees 13 agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease, and four in 10 have two or more chronic diseases, according to the executive order. It’s also estimated that one in five adults in the United States lives with a mental illness.
Seventy-seven percent of young adults do not qualify for the military based, in large part, on their health scores, and 90 percent of the nation’s $4.5 trillion in annual health care spending is for people with chronic and mental health conditions, according to a White House fact sheet.
“In short, Americans of all ages are becoming sicker, beset by illnesses that our medical system is not addressing effectively. These trends harm us, our economy, and our security,” the order reads.
The President’s MAHA Commission will demonstrate “gold-standard research on why Americans are getting sick in all health-related research funded by the federal government,” the fact sheet states.
