Secretary of U.S. Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at the Rx and Illicit Drug Summit at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 24, 2025. (John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration released its strategy to Make America Healthy Again on Tuesday, which officials hope will reduce chronic diseases and align federal policy with their beliefs. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during a briefing on the strategy the 128 “recommendations are things that I’ve been dreaming about my whole life.”

Kennedy said he hoped to implement several of the changes before the end of the year, including defining what constitutes an ultra-processed food, updating water quality standards for forever chemicals known as PFAS and changing infant formula standards. 

The report also includes potentially controversial elements that address access to vaccines, a topic several Republican senators rebuked Kennedy over during a lengthy hearing last week. 

The 20-page strategy follows the MAHA Commission’s release of its first report in May that outlined four areas of concern — nutrition, physical activity, environmental factors and “overmedicalization.”

The proposals in the new report range in scope from issues that have largely been addressed to initiatives that are likely to cause concerns among doctors and reputable medical organizations. 

For example, the strategy calls on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to “develop guidance on diagnostics and treatments for food allergies,” even though doctors are already able to diagnose and treat those conditions. 

The report also calls on the FDA to “improve regulatory processes for over-the-counter sunscreen, which has fallen behind other countries.”

Vaccine plan to come

The White House Domestic Policy Council and HHS intend to draft a separate plan addressing the childhood vaccine schedule, vaccine injuries, vaccine science, “misaligned incentives” and “scientific and medical freedom.”

Kennedy indicated during the briefing that he may seek to overhaul the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, claiming that 99% of vaccine injuries are not reported, in part, because doctors are not compensated for doing so.  

“We are recasting the entire program so that vaccine injuries will be reported; they will be studied; that individuals who suffer them will not be denied, or marginalized, or vilified, or gaslighted,” Kennedy said. “They will be welcomed and we will learn everything we can about them.”

The report doesn’t include any plans to reduce pesticide use or to seek solutions to end mass shootings, though Kennedy and others at the event said those are issues the administration will look into. 

“The firearms question is a complex question and it’s not an easy question,” Kennedy said. “The violence is what we’re concerned with.”

Kennedy said that guns have been around for a while and that they also exist in other countries that don’t have nearly the number of mass shootings as the United States, before talking about psychiatric drugs, video games and social media. 

“We are looking at that at NIH,” Kennedy said, referring to the National Institutes of Health. “We are doing studies now. We’re initiating studies to look at the correlation and the potential connection between overmedicating our kids and this violence.” 

Kennedy deferred a question about pesticides to White House Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin. 

Haley referenced a section in the newly released report titled “cumulative exposure” that said USDA, EPA and NIH will use new approach methodologies “to improve methods for evaluating human health and environmental risks of chemical contaminants.”

Rollins told reporters that pesticides require study before being approved and that they are needed to ensure a stable food supply. 

“Is it a perfect process? Arguably there is no perfect process,” Rollins said. “But it is a strong process that our farmers stand by. And a crop protection tool, such as pesticides, is absolutely essential for America not to compromise our food supply system at this point.”