America's Talking - MAHA releases strategy to improve children’s health

Episode Date: September 14, 2025

(The Center Square) – The Make America Healthy Again Commission released a sweeping strategy Tuesday to nationally improve children’s health, which includes more than 120 initiatives – including advancing research on autism, pesticides, vaccine injury and water quality – aimed at that end. The strategy fulfills a directive from an executive order the president signed in February requiring an assessment of American children’s health and a subsequent strategy for improving it. The assessment identified “four potential drivers behind the rise in childhood chronic disease” that it said simultaneously “present the clearest opportunities for progress”: poor diet, exposure to synthetic chemicals, lack of physical activity and chronic stress and over-medicalization. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Read more: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_9556095d-624e-42d1-a1dc-e09eeed6e02c.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAlipp, Chief Content Officer at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. The United States is among the most unhealthy nations in the developed world. The CDC announced this week that 76% of Americans are suffering from some chronic disease. The childhood obesity rate in the U.S. is nearly 20% and affects 14.7 million kids. With that data in mind, the Make America Healthy Again Commission under the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released a sweeping set strategy this week to improve children's health across the country. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square's White House reporter, Morgan Sweeney.

Morgan, you covered the release of this strategy. Tell us more about it. So yes, the Make America Healthy Again Commission released the strategy this week. And it was all done in response to an executive order that President Trump's signed in February, establishing the commission. And it gave them its first assignment, which was to come out with an assessment, which they did in May, of potential causes behind childhood chronic disease. Like you discussed, chronic disease is very high in America, and Secretary Kennedy is really concerned about that. And that's one of the things that he's kind of focusing on

addressing as head of HHS. And so they came out with their assessment and they identified four potential drivers behind the rise in childhood chronic disease over the years. And that is poor diet exposure to an increasing number of synthetic chemicals, lack of physical activity and chronic stress and over medicalization. And then the executive order also called on them to come up with this strategy of addressing some of those factors. And so, like I said, that's what they released this week. And it has 128 different initiatives to accomplish that goal. Well, we can't talk about 128 different initiatives in the time we have here, Morgan. But what are some of the ones that stand out to you? Yeah. So a big part of the report,

was focused on advancing research in a number of different areas. And so they're going to continue advancing research on maybe some of the potential causes of autism. And that's something that Secretary Kennedy has talked quite a bit about. And he's received some negative feedback or responses because he has said before that he thinks that vaccines potentially are linked to the tremendous increase in childhood autism that we've seen in recent years. But that's something that they're going to continue. They're going to look into some of the causes of vaccine injury, which is unique and also something that, you know, not everybody has been happy about. They're going to look at water quality, air quality, just a number of environmental things that,

you know, some people think are contributing to poor health. in America. Another thing that he talked about is some of the things that they've achieved so far, or at least they've started already in their first year. And one of those was working with states to eliminate some harmful food dyes and other things in their food. And so a number of states at this point have signed legislation that bans, I think it's seven different food dyes from school lunches, like West Virginia, I believe, was maybe the first one to do that. And then they're also banning a couple different pesticides progressively. And then eventually they're going to ban those same food dyes from all of the food in the state.

So that's one initiative that Kennedy is proud of. And, you know, when the Make America Healthy Again movement first started by particularly with a focus on these food dies, having a number of companies already moved to eliminate some of these food dyes from their products? Yeah, a number of very big food companies in the U.S. When it comes to mental health, anything in the strategy that addresses mental health? Yeah, so, I mean, connected to that, they're going to work on developing drugs that are alternatives to opioids because, I don't know, I just think of that when you say mental health because the opioid crisis, you know, is a terrible thing in our country. And so they're going to

be developing drugs that are alternatives to that. And yes, they're going to be doing some other studies on potential causes of just the rise in mental health issues in kids and what might be contributing to that. So yeah, they're going to be working on that as well. And to wrap up here, Morgan, what about the medical community? Any recommendations for what they should do? Yeah, well, I believe that something just went into effect requiring nutrition courses as part of school for doctors and just some different things there that Secretary Kennedy has said some medical schools do, but it's pretty rare. And they want it to become a regular part of that education. So that's something. And Marty McRey, who's the FDA commissioner,

and I believe he's a surgical oncologist. He expressed excitement over the strategy and just some of these changes in these departments because he said that it's, you know, they're trying to look at root causes for things in some ways for the first time. And that's just something that he's really excited about for the medical community. He says they're thirsty for this. And the National Institutes of Health, they kind of set the agenda for research for universities all across the country because they provide the funding for that sort of thing. And so, you know, they can set a different agenda now.

So he was excited about that. Thank you for joining us today, Morgan. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com.