The Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission released its “strategy plan” to combat an epidemic of chronic disease among the nation’s children.
The “Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy” follows a less condensed draft version that was leaked to the media on August 18. The official version, released on September 9, contains 120 initiatives. The strategy outlines “targeted executive actions to advance gold-standard science, realign incentives, increase public awareness, and strengthen private-sector collaboration.”
President Trump ordered the creation of a MAHA commission in a February 13 executive order, plus an assessment of the nation’s health crisis with a focus on childhood chronic diseases. The commission released its assessment report on May 22.
“The MAHA Report provides a blueprint for the entire government to focus on solving the chronic disease crisis facing American children,” said National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., in a news release on September 9. “We must make America healthy again so our children live longer and healthier lives than we will.”
Root Causes
The strategy report identifies four “potential drivers” behind the increase in childhood disease that present actionable options for improvement: poor diet, chemical exposure, chronic stress and lack of physical activity, and overmedicalization.
The 19-page plan calls for increased research on nutrition, cumulative exposure to chemicals, autism, water quality, and commonly prescribed mental health drugs. Policy directives are to update dietary guidelines, advance policies to “limit or prohibit” petroleum-based food dyes, implement GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) reform, and enforce laws on direct-to-consumer drug advertising.
The commission plans to identify evidence gaps and evaluate peer-review and publishing quality to improve scientific research standards.
New Focus
The commission’s initial report in May focused much attention on ultra-processed foods. The summer draft and official version in September have placed more emphasis on the prescribing of pharmaceuticals to children.
The strategy plan calls for the development of a special working group to “evaluate prescription patterns for SSRIs, antipsychotics, stimulants, and other relevant drugs for children and evaluate the therapeutic harms and benefits of current diagnostic thresholds, overmedication trends, and evidence-based solutions that can be scaled-up to improve mental health.”
Executive Force
Of the nearly 120 initiatives the report recommends, maybe 10 to 15 percent will get pushed through, says Ray March, a research fellow at the Independent Institute. “The most actionable ones will have to pass through [executive order],” said March, adding those would likely include nutritional labeling reform, food dye bans, and federally funded autism research.
“I think in a lot of cases that’s also where you’ll see the pushback,” said March. “The American Medical Association has entrenched interests in some regard, and they’re pushing back against Trump and his executive orders.”
HHS Restructuring
It will be interesting to see how the “compilation of facts, opinions, and priorities spanning across the nation, industry, and ages” and the “broad array of initiatives” will emerge into policies, says Twila Brase, president of the Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom.
“The report will likely jumpstart discussions and action only if someone at the executive or legislative levels uses it as leverage to make changes,” said Brase. “I expect certain items in the report—such as the chronic disease task force, the new Administration for a Healthy America [in the Department of Health and Human Services], and new research accountability and food guidelines—to appear soon.”
Transparency Boost
The report also calls for increased federal efforts by various public health agencies to improve transparency, including public reporting of research grants, tightening guardrails on HHS advisory committee members’ conflicts of interest, and establishing a public database disclosing financial relationships with industries they are entrusted to regulate.
Are Kennedy and Trump aligned on the recommendations?
“MAHA came from an executive order,” said March.
Data Tangle
The strategy plan also calls for the development of a Real-World Data Platform by the NIH, linking multifaceted datasets “for researchers studying the causes of, and developing treatments for, the chronic disease crisis.” The platform will “dramatically reduce administrative overhead, while maintaining privacy and consent protections,” states the plan.
The plan also mentions the importance of data from electronic medical records, insurance claims, and wearable devices, but this raises Fourth Amendment concerns, says Brase.
“The government should not create a ‘unified set of data on all Americans,’” said Brase. “Claims that it will maintain rigorous privacy and consent protections … cannot possibly be true. Medical information is widely shared every day because the so-called HIPAA privacy rule allows companies that hold our confidential data to share it without patient consent. So, either the administration doesn’t know this, or the administration is trying to deceive the American people.”
Notable Absences
Several groups criticized Kennedy’s removal and replacement of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) this spring and his cancellation of nearly $500 million in mRNA research funding. The first meeting of the new ACIP panel on June 25 voted on three uncontroversial recommendations, and mRNA was not mentioned in the report.
“The absence of any mention of mRNA and COVID vaccination in a report that claims to be about improving the health of children leads one to believe that political realities continue to trump real-world data,” said Brase. “That said, the report’s new vaccine injury research program may be an easier way for NIH Director Bhattacharya to attack the COVID shots without attacking President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.”
The report has another gaping hole, says Brase.
“Nothing deals with the insurance industry’s control of care and coverage, including the monopoly pricing enabled by the Affordable Care Act that confiscates family dollars that could otherwise be used for everything that makes you healthy, from food to exercise to time spent with loved ones,” said Brase.
Ashley Bateman ([email protected]) writes from Virginia.
