The White House’s “Make America Healthy Again” or “MAHA” commission, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has published its first report on what it says are four leading drivers of childhood chronic disease.
“The report is the product of a consensual process, and it represents a collaborative effort of all the agencies and the White House. And it represents a consensus that is probably the strongest and most radical consensus by a government agency in history about the state of America’s health,” Kennedy told reporters in a call ahead of its release.
Thursday’s release is the first in a process laid out by President Trump’s executive order in February. By August, the commission is due to follow up with a policy strategy to address the findings raised in this report.
The “chronic disease crisis” in children is described in the report as growing rates of a number of issues including childhood obesity, diabetes, autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, cancer, allergies and autoimmune disorders.
Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said that the Trump administration was not seeking “a European, mandate-driven regulatory system that stifles growth” as a result of the process.
“It will happen through a renewed focus on improved science throughout the federal government and our partners. And through unleashing private sector innovation to produce better solutions for our children,” Zeldin said.
Multiple current and former federal health officials criticized the report, which they said misrepresented several facts and left out other well-known drivers of childhood chronic disease.
“They’re looking for specific causes and silver bullets to draw attention to. However, prevention is all about making it easier for people to make healthy choices,” said one current federal health official in a message, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
What does the MAHA report say is causing childhood chronic disease?
The wide-ranging report is organized around four topics that it describes as the “potential drivers behind the rise in childhood chronic disease that present the clearest opportunities for progress”:
- Poor diet, driven primarily by ultra-processed foods
- Cumulative exposure to chemicals like food additives and pesticides
- Lack of physical activity and chronic stress
- “Overmedicalization” with too many prescriptions and vaccines
These largely reflect many of the themes that Kennedy has long spoken about, including as a longshot presidential candidate last year and as the head of the nation’s public health agencies in recent months.
“It is very strong, it’s very frank, and it is a clarion call to do something with utmost urgency to end this crisis. And that’s what we wanted,” Kennedy said of the report.
For example, under the heading of ultra-processed foods, the report echoes Kennedy’s criticism of the shift from using “minimally processed animal-based sources like butter and lard” to seed oils like corn and canola. And it takes aim at the federal dietary guidelines process, which is due to release a major update later this year.
Others reflect past Kennedy priorities that stop short of his previous calls. For example, the report criticizes the “corporate capture of media” through advertising campaigns paid for by drugmakers, but does not call for a ban as he did in the past, acknowledging the pharmaceutical industry “has the First Amendment right to have these” ads.
Some parts of the report mirror public health advice championed under the Biden administration, like around the “epidemic of loneliness and isolation,” which then-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned in 2023 was driven by factors like social media and technology.
It also often points to other countries as examples of how things could be done better. A section criticizing U.S. school nutrition programs cites examples from France, Japan and Nordic countries that prepare meals using healthier ingredients.
What does the MAHA report say about pesticides?
The report warns that no “country in the world has fully accounted for the fact that children are often exposed to complex mixtures of chemicals,” saying that evaluations of chemicals individually may be neglecting the “cumulative burdens” of multiple exposures.
Pesticides are named as a potential risk to be studied alongside a list that includes PFAS, microplastics, fluoride, electromagnetic radiation and chemicals used to make plastics.
“For example, a selection of research studies on a herbicide (glyphosate) have noted a range of possible health effects, ranging from reproductive and developmental disorders as well as cancers, liver inflammation and metabolic disturbances,” the report says.
Kennedy has previously spoken out vocally against glyphosate, dating back to court battles with the manufacturer of the Roundup pesticide made from the chemical. That had worried some Republicans and the agriculture industry ahead of the report’s release.
The report says that an updated government assessment of common herbicides will be released in 2026 and criticizes pesticide manufacturers for having “spent billions on research initiatives” that may have biased studies on the topic.
But the report also pledges to support U.S. farmers, acknowledging that “precipitous changes in agriculture practices could have an adverse impact” on the food supply and says that past federal reviews of herbicides “did not establish a direct link” to bad health outcomes.
“We know that the American food system is the safest in the world. It is the safest, most reliable, most robust in the world. But now we talk about how to make it even better and healthier,” said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.
The National Corn Growers Association said it was “deeply troubled” by the report, saying it was “filled with fear-based rather than science-based information about pesticides” like atrazine and glyphosate that have been vetted by the EPA.
“If the administration’s goal is to bring more efficiency to government, then why is the secretary of Health and Human Services duplicating efforts by raising questions about pesticides that have been answered repeatedly through research and reviews by federal regulatory bodies,” the group said in a statement after the report’s release.
What does the MAHA report say about vaccines and medications?
The report lists a number of medications that it says raise “important questions” about its long-term impact for use on children. The list includes antidepressants, stimulant medications for ADHD, weight loss drugs, antibiotics and acid suppressants.
“Increasingly common, these popular weight-loss and diabetes drugs with complicated metabolic effects lack neurodevelopmental and other long term safety data, raising the specter of unforeseen problems that interrupt, damage, or impair metabolism and growth development,” the report says of GLP-1 agonist medications.
It calls out the “growth of the childhood vaccine schedule,” which Kennedy has long denounced, often with misleading claims about how vaccines were not sufficiently vetted for safety and efficacy.
“The number of vaccinations on the American vaccine schedule exceeds the number of vaccinations on many European schedules, including Denmark, which has nearly half as many,” the report says.
The report also reiterates Kennedy’s criticism of the CDC’s vaccine safety monitoring efforts, like in the Vaccines Adverse Event Reporting System and Vaccine Safety Datalink, as well as the federal approach to compensating childhood vaccine injury.
It also criticizes groups like the American Medical Association for efforts to address disinformation about vaccines, saying it “undermines the open dialogue essential to protecting and improving children’s health.”
Kennedy’s approach to vaccines has put him at odds with groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has urged him to do more to foster confidence in the “rigorous safety system” for vaccines needed to protect children.
“FDA and the CDC work together to ensure that years of vaccine clinical trials and safety studies are exhaustively examined, with rigorous, respected, and accepted scientific evidence,” the group said in a letter in March.
What does the MAHA report get wrong?
Multiple current and former federal health officials raised a number of issues with the report, which they said misstated several facts and left out already well-documented drivers known to be causing chronic disease in children that health authorities are already working to address.
Those efforts, they warned, such as work to avert lead poisoning in children, are now under-resourced in the wake of massive layoffs and further proposed budget cuts.
“This document makes it seem like we don’t know what makes people sick,” one federal health official said in a message, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Two officials pointed out maternal health and preterm birth was left out of the report, which is known to lead to a number of health problems and can be prevented through steps like quitting smoking, avoiding alcohol and getting early prenatal care. Smoking, and the need for broader efforts to prevent youth use of nicotine products, was also not mentioned in the report.
Multiple officials said that scientific research and federal data had been selectively misrepresented in the report.
One official pointed out that what the report highlights as a dramatic rise in childhood cancer ignores improvements in early diagnosis driving the higher rates, as well as declines in deaths.
Another section of the report criticizes the federal dietary guidelines for focusing on limiting sodium instead of focusing on minimizing ultra-processed foods, which a former top FDA official said was “very puzzling.”
“Reducing sodium in the diet is likely the most impactful step they could take to reduce chronic disease risk, and they ignore the totality of the science, including large randomized trials of salt interventions and salt substitutes, that demonstrate important reductions in chronic diseases,” Dr. Susan Mayne, the FDA’s former top nutrition official, said in an email.
Read the full report
