President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to establish the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission to investigate and address the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis with a focus on childhood chronic diseases.
In a fact sheet, the White House said that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the newly confirmed secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, will lead the effort. Within 100 days, the commission will write an assessment that summaries what is known and what questions remain regarding the childhood chronic disease crisis and how they compare to other countries. The commission is then expected to come up with a strategy 80 days later that is based on the assessment.
The commission has four policy directives to reverse chronic disease:
- Empower Americans through transparency and open-source data and avoid conflicts of interest in all federally funded health research
- Prioritize gold-standard research on why Americans are getting sick in all health-related research funded by the federal government
- Work with farmers to ensure that U.S. food is the healthy, abundant, and affordable
- Ensure expanded treatment options and health coverage flexibility for beneficial lifestyle changes and disease prevention
The commission will also aim to restore trust in medical and scientific institutions and hold public hearings, meetings, roundtables, and similar events to receive expert input from leaders in public health.
The nation’s health care system focuses on treating chronic illnesses rather than preventing them, which has led to a growing health crisis, the fact sheet said, noting that:
- In the U.S., six in 10 adults have at least one chronic condition and four in 10 have two or more.
- The country saw an 88 percent increase in cancer from 1990 to 2021.
- Asthma is more common in the U.S. compared to other parts of the world, including most of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
There is also a rise in chronic conditions in children. In 2022, 30 million children in the country had at least one health condition like allergies, asthma, or autoimmune diseases. The latest statistics show that autism is now impacts one in 36 children, and 18 percent of teens suffer from fatty liver disease, 30 percent are prediabetic, and more than 40 percent are overweight or obese. These conditions were unheard of in prior generations, according to the fact sheet.
“To fully address the growing health crisis in America, we must re-direct our national focus, in the public and private sectors, toward understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease,” the executive order said. “This includes fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety. We must restore the integrity of the scientific process by protecting expert recommendations from inappropriate influence and increasing transparency regarding existing data. We must ensure our health care system promotes health rather than just managing disease."