In A Tumultuous Year, U.S. Health Policy Has Been Dramatically Reshaped Under RFK Jr. | EUROtoday

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the whirlwind first yr of President Donald Trump’s second time period, a number of the most polarizing modifications have taken place throughout the Department of Health and Human Services, the place Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has brazenly rebuffed the medical institution as he converts the concepts of his Make America Healthy Again motion into public coverage.

Since getting into workplace in February, the well being secretary has overseen a dramatic reshaping of the companies he oversees, together with eliminating 1000’s of jobs and freezing or canceling billions of {dollars} for scientific analysis. As a part of his marketing campaign in opposition to persistent illness, he has redrawn the federal government’s place on subjects akin to seed oils, fluoride and Tylenol. He additionally has repeatedly used his authority to advertise discredited concepts about vaccines.

The division’s fast transformation has garnered reward from MAHA supporters who say they lengthy considered HHS as corrupt and untrustworthy and have been ready for such a disruption. And each Democrats and Republicans have applauded a number of the company’s actions, together with efforts to encourage wholesome consuming and train, and offers to decrease the costs of pricey medicine.

But lots of the drastic modifications Kennedy has led on the division are elevating grave considerations amongst docs and public well being specialists.

“At least in the immediate or intermediate future, the United States is going to be hobbled and hollowed out in its scientific leadership,” mentioned Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University public well being regulation professor who was faraway from a National Institutes of Health advisory board earlier this yr with a letter that mentioned he was now not wanted. “I think it will be extraordinarily difficult to reverse all the damage.”

HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon denied any risk to scientific experience on the company and lauded its work.

“In 2025, the Department confronted long-standing public health challenges with transparency, courage, and gold-standard science,” Nixon mentioned in a press release. “HHS will carry this momentum into 2026 to strengthen accountability, put patients first, and protect public health.”

The overhaul comes alongside broader uncertainties within the nation’s well being system, together with Medicaid cuts handed by Congress this yr and expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies which might be placing hundreds of thousands of Americans’ insurance coverage protection in jeopardy.

Here’s a better take a look at Kennedy’s first yr main the nation’s well being company:

After a few years spent publicly assailing vaccines, Kennedy sought throughout his affirmation course of to reassure senators he wouldn’t take a wrecking ball to vaccine science. But lower than a yr later, his well being division has repeatedly pushed the bounds of these commitments.

In May, Kennedy introduced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would now not advocate COVID-19 vaccines for wholesome kids and pregnant girls — a transfer instantly questioned by public well being specialists who noticed no new knowledge to justify the change.

In June, Kennedy fired a complete 17-member CDC vaccine advisory committee — later putting in a number of of his personal replacements, together with a number of vaccine skeptics.

That group has made choices which have shocked medical professionals, together with declining to advocate COVID-19 photographs for anybody, including new restrictions on a mixture shot in opposition to chickenpox, measles, mumps and rubella and reversing the longstanding advice that each one infants obtain a hepatitis B shot at delivery.

Kennedy in November additionally personally directed the CDC to desert its place that vaccines don’t trigger autism, with out supplying any new proof to assist the change. While he left the outdated language on the web site to maintain a promise he made to Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, he added a disclaimer saying it remained due to the settlement.

Public well being researchers and advocates strongly refute the up to date web site and notice that scientists have totally explored the problem in rigorous analysis spanning a long time, all pointing to the identical conclusion that vaccines don’t trigger autism.

Kennedy has promised a wide-ranging effort to review environmental components that doubtlessly contribute to autism and in an Oval Office occasion with Trump in September promoted unproven and in some instances discredited ties between Tylenol, vaccines and the advanced mind dysfunction.

Within two months of taking workplace, Kennedy introduced a sweeping restructuring of HHS that will shut down total companies, consolidate others into a brand new one targeted on persistent illness and lay off some 10,000 staff on prime of 10,000 others who had already taken buyouts.

While elements of the hassle are nonetheless tied up in courtroom, 1000’s of the mass layoffs had been allowed to face. Those and voluntary departures considerably thinned out the sprawling $1.7 trillion division, which oversees meals and hospital inspections, medical insurance for roughly half of the nation and vaccine suggestions.

Kennedy additionally has fired or compelled out a number of leaders at HHS, amongst them 4 administrators on the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration’s former vaccine chief and a director of the CDC whom he had employed lower than a month earlier.

On prime of staffing cuts, he has overseen vital cuts to scientific analysis. That consists of NIH slashing billions of {dollars} in analysis initiatives and the termination of $500 million in contracts to develop vaccines utilizing mRNA expertise.

Amid the cuts, Kennedy has proposed or funded some new analysis on subjects associated to his MAHA targets, together with autism, Lyme illness and meals components.

Kennedy began utilizing the phrase “MAHA” on the marketing campaign path final yr to explain his campaign in opposition to poisonous exposures and childhood persistent illness, however 2025 was the yr it grew to become ingrained within the nationwide lexicon.

In his tenure to this point, the well being secretary has made it the centerpiece of his work, utilizing the MAHA branding to wage struggle on ultra-processed meals, stress firms to section out synthetic meals dyes, criticize fluoride in ingesting water and push to ban junk meals from this system that subsidizes grocery retailer runs for low-income Americans.

The concept has even unfold past Kennedy’s company throughout the federal authorities.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has appeared with Kennedy to advertise health with pull-up shows. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy teamed up with Kennedy in early December to announce $1 billion in funding for airports to put in sources like playgrounds and nursing pods for moms and infants. And Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin just lately introduced he’s working towards unveiling a MAHA agenda with health-related targets for his personal division.

MAHA has earned widespread recognition among the many American public — even because it has endured some administration foibles. In May, for instance, HHS confronted scrutiny for releasing a MAHA report that contained a number of citations to research that didn’t exist.

But to the extent that the initiative has included calls to motion that aren’t primarily based on science — akin to urging mistrust in vaccines or selling uncooked milk, which is much extra seemingly than pasteurized milk to result in sickness — critics say it may be harmful.