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The whirlwind first year of President Donald Trump’s second term has brought some of the most polarizing changes within the United States. Department of Health and Human ServicesRobert F. Kennedy Jr. translated the ideas of the Make America Healthy Again movement into public policy and publicly rejected the demands of the medical establishment.
Since taking office in February, the health secretary has implemented a major reorganization of the agency he oversees, including eliminating thousands of jobs and freezing or canceling billions of dollars in scientific research funding. As part of his campaign to combat chronic disease, he has reformulated the government’s stance on topics such as seed oil, fluoride and Tylenol. He has also repeatedly used his power to promote discredited views about vaccines.
The department’s rapid transformation has won praise from MAHA’s supporters, who say they have long viewed HHS as corrupt and untrustworthy and had been waiting for such disruption. Both Democrats and Republicans have applauded some of the agency’s actions, including efforts to encourage healthy eating and exercise and agreements to lower expensive drug prices.
But many of the major changes Kennedy has led at the department have raised serious concerns among doctors and public health experts.
“At least in the near to mid-term future, America’s scientific leadership is going to be embattled and hollowed out,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of public health law at Georgetown University. National Institutes of Health The advisory board wrote a letter earlier this year saying he was no longer needed. “I think it’s going to be very difficult to reverse all the damage.”
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon denied there was any threat to the agency’s scientific expertise and praised its work.
“By 2025, the department will address long-standing public health challenges with transparency, courage, and gold-standard science,” Nixon said in a statement. “HHS will continue this momentum into 2026 to strengthen accountability, put patients first, and protect public health.”
The overhaul comes amid broader uncertainty about the nation’s health system, including Medicaid cuts passed by Congress this year and expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies that have put the insurance coverage of millions of Americans at risk.
Here are the details of Kennedy’s first year leading the nation’s health agency:
Kennedy’s vaccine views cause uproar across department
After years of publicly attacking vaccines, Kennedy sought to reassure senators during his confirmation process that he would not undermine vaccine science. But less than a year later, his health department has repeatedly pushed the envelope on those promises.
In May, Kennedy announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women, a move that was immediately questioned by public health experts who said there was no new data to justify the change.
In June, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee and later appointed several of his own replacements, including several vaccine skeptics.
The group has made decisions that have alarmed medical professionals, including refusing to recommend that anyone get a COVID-19 vaccine, adding new restrictions on combined shots for chickenpox, measles, mumps and rubella, and reversing long-standing recommendations that all babies receive a hepatitis B shot at birth.
Kennedy also personally directed the CDC in November to abandon its position that vaccines do not cause autism, but did not provide any new evidence to support the change. Although he kept the old language on the website to fulfill his promise to Republican senators. bill cassidyhe added a disclaimer saying it was being retained due to the agreement.
Public health researchers and advocates strongly pushed back against the updated website, noting that scientists have thoroughly explored the issue in rigorous decades-long studies, all of which point to the same conclusion: vaccines do not cause autism.
Kennedy has pledged a broad effort to study environmental factors that may contribute to autism, and touted unproven and in some cases discredited links between Tylenol, vaccines and complex brain diseases at an Oval Office event with Trump in September.
Kennedy reconfigures HHS with massive staffing, research cuts
Within two months of taking office, Kennedy announced a sweeping reorganization of HHS, closing the entire agency, merging other agencies into a new agency focused on chronic diseases, and laying off about 10,000 employees on top of the 10,000 already being acquired.
Thousands of mass layoffs were allowed to stand, although some of the effort remains in court. The personnel and voluntary departures have significantly weakened the massive, $1.7 trillion department, which oversees food and hospital inspections, health insurance for about half the country and vaccine recommendations.
Kennedy also fired or ousted several leaders at the Department of Health and Human Services, including four directors of the National Institutes of Health, the former vaccine chief at the Food and Drug Administration and a director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention he hired less than a month ago.
In addition to layoffs, he also oversaw deep cuts in scientific research. These include the NIH cutting billions of dollars in research programs and terminating a $500 million contract to develop vaccines using mRNA technology.
In the process of cutting spending, Kennedy proposed or funded new research on a number of topics related to his MAHA goals, including autism, Lyme disease and food additives.
Despite some setbacks, MAHA remains strong
Kennedy began using the term “MAHA” on the campaign trail last year to describe his fight against toxic exposure and chronic disease in children, but by 2025, the term was firmly entrenched in the national lexicon.
So far, the health secretary has made it a centerpiece of his work, using the MAHA brand to wage war on ultra-processed foods, forcing companies to phase out artificial food dyes, criticizing fluoride in drinking water and pushing to ban junk food from subsidy programs that run grocery stores for low-income Americans.
The idea even spread beyond Kennedy’s agency to the entire federal government.
minister of defense Peter Heggs Join Kennedy to promote fitness with pull-ups. In early December, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy joined forces with Kennedy to announce $1 billion in funding to install resources at airports such as playgrounds and maternal and child care pods. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin recently announced that he is working to launch a MAHA agenda for his department that includes health-related goals.
MAHA has won broad popularity among the American public—even as it has suffered from some government shortcomings. For example, in May, HHS faced scrutiny for releasing a MAHA report that repeatedly cited nonexistent research.
But to the extent that the initiative calls for actions that are not based on science — such as urging distrust of vaccines or promoting raw milk (which is more likely to cause illness than pasteurized milk) — critics say it could be dangerous.