RFK Jr. Has Early Mandate to Tackle Children’s Health

Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

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.

Within 100 days (by ​​May 22), the commission will deliver an initial assessment of potential factors that contribute to the chronic disease epidemic, the order states. A national Make Our Children Healthy Again strategy will be presented within 180 days.

The commission includes the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency; the departments of Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, Education, and Housing and Urban Development; and several economic advisers. The FDA commissioner, the CDC director, and the NIH director will also be involved.

Sayer Ji, co-founder of Stand for Health Freedom and founder and director of GreenMedInfo, said Trump’s executive order is “an extraordinary and historic moment for the health freedom movement and the future of our nation’s well-being.”

The commission institutionalizes the MAHA movement that Kennedy got behind last year, he said.

“For far too long, we have watched as chronic disease, vaccine injury, environmental toxicity and regulatory capture have devastated the health of millions—especially our children,” Ji said.

“For the first time in modern history, a federal commission will formally acknowledge these crises and work toward real solutions that put the well-being of the American people over corporate profits.”

‘Radical Transparency’

Kennedy has said that “radical transparency and returning gold-standard science to the NIH, the FDA and CDC,” and “ending the corporate capture of those agencies” that led to compromised science are two parts of his plan.

These dovetail with the commission’s objectives.

Federally funded health research should “avoid conflicts of interest,” empower Americans through transparency and open-source data, “and should avoid or eliminate conflicts of interest that skew outcomes and perpetuate distrust,” the White House said regarding the commission.

The NIH and other health-related research funded by the federal government should prioritize gold-standard research on the root causes of why Americans are getting sick, according to the fact sheet.

Kennedy said he believes that little will change in the health arena until corporate influence on the FDA, the CDC, and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) is addressed.

At a roundtable organized by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) in September 2024, Kennedy said these agencies “advance the mercantile and commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry,“ which has transformed the agencies and the food industry into ”sock puppets for the industry” that they’re supposed to regulate.

Working With Agriculture Secretary

Kennedy is expected to work with Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins on several initiatives, aside from the new commission.

The USDA and HHS have a late 2025 deadline to complete the 2025–2030 edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Rollins said on Feb. 14 that she will also work with Kennedy and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to restrict Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, also known as food stamps, to healthier items.

“We really need to look at where that money is going, what it’s being spent on,” she said. “I look forward to working with Bobby Kennedy as we figure out, ‘Do we have the healthiest choices?’ So when a taxpayer is putting money into SNAP, are we OK with us using their tax dollars to feed really bad food and sugary drinks to children who perhaps need something more nutritious?”

SNAP benefits were distributed to 42.1 million people in fiscal year 2023, according to the USDA.

Rollins said she believes SNAP grew by almost 30 percent under the Biden administration.

“Will we ever take food out of a hungry child’s mouth? Of course not, this is the United States of America,” she said.

Read the rest here…