ASIAN WISCONZINE ONLINE
OCTOber 2025 ISSUE
What the Trump Administration, RFK Jr., and the MAHA Report Got Wrong About Improving Children’s Health
By Jill Rosenthal and Steven Woolf
(LEFT): A man holds his 14-month-old son while the baby gets a vaccination during a vaccine clinic on March 1, 2025, in Lubbock, Texas. (Getty/Jan Sonnenmair/)
The Make America Healthy Again Commission’s strategy report underscores the importance of childhood nutrition but casts doubt on proven health strategies fails to acknowledge the Trump administration’s harm to children’s health and distracts from effective strategies to prevent chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity and to ensure access to vaccines, food security, and clean air and water.
The data are clear that children in the United States are less healthy than those in 18 peer countries, and the gap is widening. Yet the Trump administration’s agenda, alongside the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission’s recently released “Make Our Children Healthy Again” strategy report, will not make American kids healthier. In fact, they will further endanger children’s health.
From 2007 to 2023, children from birth to age 19 in the United States were almost twice as likely to die compared with their counterparts in peer countries, translating to 54 excess child deaths per day. During this time period, children in the United States had worsening rates of chronic developmental, mental, and physical health conditions higher obesity rates poorer sleep and even earlier onset of puberty.
Childhood disease harms growth, development, and learning in the short term and can damage adult health, well-being, and economic prosperity in the long term. Correctly, the Trump administration has declared that improving child health should be a priority. According to a May 2022 survey by Lake Research Partners, most American voters want the federal government to invest in children and to increase its focus on programs for children.
When it comes to actions, however, the administration is failing. In just his first eight months in office, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have systematically undermined child health, including through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The “Make Our Children Healthy Again” strategy report, published on September 9, 2025, goes even further by casting doubt on effective health interventions and misleading the public. Furthermore, the report’s recommendations focus on nutritious foods—an important priority for our children—but fail to address the systemic conditions that influence food intake and the most urgent issues that are actually harming child health. Below are just three ways the report and the Trump administration are getting things wrong about how to meaningfully improve children’s health.
The Trump administration gutted the very institutions responsible for studying children’s health and eliminated programs to prevent and manage chronic diseases
The strategy report calls for using “gold-standard science” to address childhood chronic disease. Yet the Trump administration has gutted the very institutions that specialize in cutting-edge scientific research and fired some of the nation’s top experts on children’s health. Federal courts have reversed some of the administration’s actions, but many others are still causing damage. President Trump has decimated agencies and cut grant funding that supports medical research, including at children’s hospitals eliminated the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research and Development and removed expertise from agency advisory councils such as the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices—actions that will stall scientific innovation for children’s health.
One example of this disconnect: Although the commission’s May 2025 assessment warned that children are harmed by exposure to pesticides, the September 2025 report is soft on industry and called only for more research on the health impact of chemicals. The administration has announced plans to lift environmental protections that limit children’s exposure to chemicals and has taken steps to terminate federal research grants on environmental toxins, including agricultural pesticides and PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” that can contaminate the food supply. At the same time, Congress’ House Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill creates broad product liability protections for pesticide and chemical manufacturers and terminates completion of risk assessments for PFAS.
In his fiscal year (FY) 2026 budget request, President Trump proposed cutting $320 million from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, shrinking it by 35 percent. On top of gutting that funding, the Trump administration also slashed funding at other institutions that do crucial research on environmental toxins. The administration’s FY 2026 budget request also proposed cuts of about $18 billion, or 38 percent, to NIH $5 billion, or 54 percent, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and $5 billion, or 54 percent, to the EPA.
The Trump administration’s plan to weaken clean air protections is projected to cause more than 10,000 preventable asthma attacks daily. Asthma is a leading chronic condition for children and can lead to long-term lung damage and increase the risk of future respiratory conditions.
Casting doubt on mainstream science, the strategy report calls for dubious approaches such as feeding data from medical bills, doctors’ notes, and devices placed on children’s bodies into computerized simulation and “an AI-driven approach,” producing results that are potentially rife with errors. This is part of what it calls “gold-standard science.”
Despite claiming interest in reducing childhood chronic disease, the administration has proposed to eliminate initiatives at the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion that prevent chronic diseases. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is also reportedly threatening to unilaterally fire all members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which may jeopardize access to more than 100 preventive health care services, including screening for chronic diseases and birth defects and annual well-child services.
The administration’s assault on environmental protections, along with the devastating OBBBA cuts to Medicaid of about $900 billion over a decade that will limit access to health care and early intervention services and the law’s cuts to basic food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, will further harm children’s health and well-being. The September 2025 report’s recommendation that Medicaid providers offer nutrition coaching and fitness measurement does not help Medicaid-dependent families who will face drastic Medicaid cuts. Removing artificial ingredients from food does not help children who cannot access food. The threat to health, education, and well-being is even greater for youth who are LGBTQI+, disabled, Black, or Native American. They already face health disparities and are now being targeted by President Trump’s executive orders aimed at eliminating diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
The Trump administration’s MAHA report casts doubt on proven health strategies
The September 2025 report alarmingly sows distrust in science and medicine, failing to ackowledge leading strategies to prevent childhood disease and protect health. For instance, the report casts doubt on the safety of vaccines despite overwhelming evidence that routine childhood vaccination has saved millions of lives. Its discussion of contaminants in drinking water fails to mention lead or industrial chemicals but instead calls for further study of fluoride, even though decades of research have shown that water fluoridation is an effective mechanism to reduce tooth decay, the most common childhood chronic disease in the United States. As written, the report will at best confuse the public. At worst it could lead to a belief in false cures and delays in evidence-based care that could result in considerable harm to children and families. ‘
The MAHA report ignores critical opportunities to improve child health
The “Make Our Children Healthy Again” strategy report accurately identifies some issues that harm children’s health—poor diet, lack of physical activity, chronic stress, and environmental chemicals—but its recommendations focus on strategies that would either make only incremental improvements to child health or would have no impact whatsoever while ignoring very real opportunities to dramatically help children. For instance, the report touts whole, healthy foods but fails to acknowledge the relationship between child health and food security or to advocate for science-based nutrition programs that promote child health. It comes on the heels of OBBBA’s elimination of the SNAP-Ed program, which teaches communities and families ways to prepare healthy meals, avoid unhealthy food, and increase physical activity. It also could lead to confusion for parents and caregivers. For example, Coca-Cola Co.’s recent plans to use cane sugar in a line of soft drinks may give families the false impression that beverages sweetened with cane sugar are healthier than those sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup and are worth buying, even though studies have found that sugar-sweetened beverages contribute to obesity and diabetes and that both products harm health regardless of the sugar type.
The report sows doubt about the childhood immunization schedule, despite overwhelming evidence of the lives it has saved. It calls for new studies on the safety and efficacy of vaccines even though Secretary Kennedy canceled nearly $500 million in vaccine research needed for future pandemics. These actions have created vaccine policy chaos, leading to nationwide confusion among parents, physicians, pharmacists, and insurers.
Similarly, the report acknowledges the significant stress and mental health challenges facing today’s children and teens and calls vaguely for more research, but the Trump administration proposes to defund the agency responsible for research and guidelines on mental health and substance abuse services. It also rescinded grants to increase the supply of school mental health counselors and social workers and proposes to end funding for the LGBTQI+ national suicide-prevention hotline. Warning about the overuse of prescription drugs for mental health, the report calls for tougher guidelines that will increase insurance company denials, making it more difficult for children to get treatment. And for the fentanyl crisis among teens, the report only recommends training school and library staff to recognize overdoses.
Finally, the strategy report fails to mention any plans to address the leading cause of death in American children and adolescents—gun violence—even though a KFF analysis in 2023 showed that children in the United States are 28 times more likely to die by a firearm than the average of children in 11 peer countries. Notably, the Trump administration recently cut more than half of federal funding for gun violence prevention programs and the FY 2026 budget request eliminates all funding for firearm injury and mortality prevention research grants.
Conclusion
As with the Trump administration’s posture on child health in general, the “Make Our Children Healthy Again” strategy report puts forward an agenda that might seem reasonable on the surface but fails to address the most urgent issues for child health. The report relies on false and confusing information and openly sows distrust in proven health strategies such as vaccines. The MAHA commission calls for research and education at the expense of regulatory strategies, allowing industry to pollute America’s air and water, and squanders an opportunity to offer a bold plan that would best use limited resources and capacity to improve child health. It distracts from the real drivers of childhood disease and avoidable death—and from the policies the administration is pursuing that pose an existential threat to children’s health.
Jill Rosenthal is Director, Public Health
Steven Woolf is Senior Fellow
The data are clear that children in the United States are less healthy than those in 18 peer countries, and the gap is widening. Yet the Trump administration’s agenda, alongside the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission’s recently released “Make Our Children Healthy Again” strategy report, will not make American kids healthier. In fact, they will further endanger children’s health.
From 2007 to 2023, children from birth to age 19 in the United States were almost twice as likely to die compared with their counterparts in peer countries, translating to 54 excess child deaths per day. During this time period, children in the United States had worsening rates of chronic developmental, mental, and physical health conditions higher obesity rates poorer sleep and even earlier onset of puberty.
Childhood disease harms growth, development, and learning in the short term and can damage adult health, well-being, and economic prosperity in the long term. Correctly, the Trump administration has declared that improving child health should be a priority. According to a May 2022 survey by Lake Research Partners, most American voters want the federal government to invest in children and to increase its focus on programs for children.
When it comes to actions, however, the administration is failing. In just his first eight months in office, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have systematically undermined child health, including through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The “Make Our Children Healthy Again” strategy report, published on September 9, 2025, goes even further by casting doubt on effective health interventions and misleading the public. Furthermore, the report’s recommendations focus on nutritious foods—an important priority for our children—but fail to address the systemic conditions that influence food intake and the most urgent issues that are actually harming child health. Below are just three ways the report and the Trump administration are getting things wrong about how to meaningfully improve children’s health.
The Trump administration gutted the very institutions responsible for studying children’s health and eliminated programs to prevent and manage chronic diseases
The strategy report calls for using “gold-standard science” to address childhood chronic disease. Yet the Trump administration has gutted the very institutions that specialize in cutting-edge scientific research and fired some of the nation’s top experts on children’s health. Federal courts have reversed some of the administration’s actions, but many others are still causing damage. President Trump has decimated agencies and cut grant funding that supports medical research, including at children’s hospitals eliminated the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research and Development and removed expertise from agency advisory councils such as the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices—actions that will stall scientific innovation for children’s health.
One example of this disconnect: Although the commission’s May 2025 assessment warned that children are harmed by exposure to pesticides, the September 2025 report is soft on industry and called only for more research on the health impact of chemicals. The administration has announced plans to lift environmental protections that limit children’s exposure to chemicals and has taken steps to terminate federal research grants on environmental toxins, including agricultural pesticides and PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” that can contaminate the food supply. At the same time, Congress’ House Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill creates broad product liability protections for pesticide and chemical manufacturers and terminates completion of risk assessments for PFAS.
In his fiscal year (FY) 2026 budget request, President Trump proposed cutting $320 million from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, shrinking it by 35 percent. On top of gutting that funding, the Trump administration also slashed funding at other institutions that do crucial research on environmental toxins. The administration’s FY 2026 budget request also proposed cuts of about $18 billion, or 38 percent, to NIH $5 billion, or 54 percent, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and $5 billion, or 54 percent, to the EPA.
The Trump administration’s plan to weaken clean air protections is projected to cause more than 10,000 preventable asthma attacks daily. Asthma is a leading chronic condition for children and can lead to long-term lung damage and increase the risk of future respiratory conditions.
Casting doubt on mainstream science, the strategy report calls for dubious approaches such as feeding data from medical bills, doctors’ notes, and devices placed on children’s bodies into computerized simulation and “an AI-driven approach,” producing results that are potentially rife with errors. This is part of what it calls “gold-standard science.”
Despite claiming interest in reducing childhood chronic disease, the administration has proposed to eliminate initiatives at the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion that prevent chronic diseases. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is also reportedly threatening to unilaterally fire all members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which may jeopardize access to more than 100 preventive health care services, including screening for chronic diseases and birth defects and annual well-child services.
The administration’s assault on environmental protections, along with the devastating OBBBA cuts to Medicaid of about $900 billion over a decade that will limit access to health care and early intervention services and the law’s cuts to basic food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, will further harm children’s health and well-being. The September 2025 report’s recommendation that Medicaid providers offer nutrition coaching and fitness measurement does not help Medicaid-dependent families who will face drastic Medicaid cuts. Removing artificial ingredients from food does not help children who cannot access food. The threat to health, education, and well-being is even greater for youth who are LGBTQI+, disabled, Black, or Native American. They already face health disparities and are now being targeted by President Trump’s executive orders aimed at eliminating diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
The Trump administration’s MAHA report casts doubt on proven health strategies
The September 2025 report alarmingly sows distrust in science and medicine, failing to ackowledge leading strategies to prevent childhood disease and protect health. For instance, the report casts doubt on the safety of vaccines despite overwhelming evidence that routine childhood vaccination has saved millions of lives. Its discussion of contaminants in drinking water fails to mention lead or industrial chemicals but instead calls for further study of fluoride, even though decades of research have shown that water fluoridation is an effective mechanism to reduce tooth decay, the most common childhood chronic disease in the United States. As written, the report will at best confuse the public. At worst it could lead to a belief in false cures and delays in evidence-based care that could result in considerable harm to children and families. ‘
The MAHA report ignores critical opportunities to improve child health
The “Make Our Children Healthy Again” strategy report accurately identifies some issues that harm children’s health—poor diet, lack of physical activity, chronic stress, and environmental chemicals—but its recommendations focus on strategies that would either make only incremental improvements to child health or would have no impact whatsoever while ignoring very real opportunities to dramatically help children. For instance, the report touts whole, healthy foods but fails to acknowledge the relationship between child health and food security or to advocate for science-based nutrition programs that promote child health. It comes on the heels of OBBBA’s elimination of the SNAP-Ed program, which teaches communities and families ways to prepare healthy meals, avoid unhealthy food, and increase physical activity. It also could lead to confusion for parents and caregivers. For example, Coca-Cola Co.’s recent plans to use cane sugar in a line of soft drinks may give families the false impression that beverages sweetened with cane sugar are healthier than those sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup and are worth buying, even though studies have found that sugar-sweetened beverages contribute to obesity and diabetes and that both products harm health regardless of the sugar type.
The report sows doubt about the childhood immunization schedule, despite overwhelming evidence of the lives it has saved. It calls for new studies on the safety and efficacy of vaccines even though Secretary Kennedy canceled nearly $500 million in vaccine research needed for future pandemics. These actions have created vaccine policy chaos, leading to nationwide confusion among parents, physicians, pharmacists, and insurers.
Similarly, the report acknowledges the significant stress and mental health challenges facing today’s children and teens and calls vaguely for more research, but the Trump administration proposes to defund the agency responsible for research and guidelines on mental health and substance abuse services. It also rescinded grants to increase the supply of school mental health counselors and social workers and proposes to end funding for the LGBTQI+ national suicide-prevention hotline. Warning about the overuse of prescription drugs for mental health, the report calls for tougher guidelines that will increase insurance company denials, making it more difficult for children to get treatment. And for the fentanyl crisis among teens, the report only recommends training school and library staff to recognize overdoses.
Finally, the strategy report fails to mention any plans to address the leading cause of death in American children and adolescents—gun violence—even though a KFF analysis in 2023 showed that children in the United States are 28 times more likely to die by a firearm than the average of children in 11 peer countries. Notably, the Trump administration recently cut more than half of federal funding for gun violence prevention programs and the FY 2026 budget request eliminates all funding for firearm injury and mortality prevention research grants.
Conclusion
As with the Trump administration’s posture on child health in general, the “Make Our Children Healthy Again” strategy report puts forward an agenda that might seem reasonable on the surface but fails to address the most urgent issues for child health. The report relies on false and confusing information and openly sows distrust in proven health strategies such as vaccines. The MAHA commission calls for research and education at the expense of regulatory strategies, allowing industry to pollute America’s air and water, and squanders an opportunity to offer a bold plan that would best use limited resources and capacity to improve child health. It distracts from the real drivers of childhood disease and avoidable death—and from the policies the administration is pursuing that pose an existential threat to children’s health.
Jill Rosenthal is Director, Public Health
Steven Woolf is Senior Fellow
