A year of RFK Jr.: Sweeping change and fears of lasting damage

Before President Trump took office for a second time, he pledged that he would allow Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “go wild” on health.

One year ago today, the Senate narrowly confirmed Kennedy to serve as the nation’s health secretary, and the Department of Health & Human Services is a vastly different agency.

Many healthcare leaders say he’s endangering the health of Americans. They point to his sweeping changes of vaccine policy, his reorganization of the Health Department, and the ouster of key leaders who wouldn’t sign off on his mandates.

A host of healthcare organizations have called for Kennedy to resign and have implored President Trump to fire him if he won’t step away. But there’s no indication Kennedy has lost any support in the White House.

At a virtual news conference organized by Protect Our Care this week, a group that has been sharply critical of Kennedy and Trump, healthcare leaders and Democratic lawmakers denounced Kennedy’s actions.

Georges Benjamin, MD, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said at the event that Kennedy’s tenure has been marked by “broken promises” and “administrative incompetence.”

“In my mind, he's failed in his key role as the nation's chief health official, running the nation's top public health agency,” Benjamin said. “He's really, in many ways, proving himself to be an incompetent manager far too often.”

Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, an oncologist and health policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania, pointed to changes in vaccine policy under Kennedy’s tenure and faulted him for not strongly encouraging Americans to get the measles vaccine even as more cases rise.

“In the last year, RFK Jr has made America demonstrably less healthy through an avalanche of misinformation, fear, uncertainty and doubt,” Emanuel said at the event.

“He has undermined the trust in the scientific basis for government decisions and policies,” Emanuel added. “He's politicized decisions, and he's made substantial cuts on a political basis. This is all going to come back. It has already made us less healthy. It is actually going to make us less healthy for years and decades to come, and the damage will be done.”

U.S. Rep. Kim Schreier, a Democrat from Washington state and a pediatrician, also participated in the event and said she’s worried that Kennedy is causing more Americans to be skeptical of the safety of vaccines. And she said she’s worried about the impact on children.

“Tragically, he has been just as destructive, if not more so than we had worried,” Schreier said of Kennedy. “In just a year, he has done unparalleled damage to our nation's public health.”

Backed by Trump

Kennedy has maintained support of the one constituent who matters most to his future: President Trump.

The president has repeatedly voiced support for Kennedy. Trump hosted Kennedy and Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in the White House this summer. Trump repeated debunked claims about autism being linked to vaccines and warned pregnant women against taking Tylenol, drawing condemnation from a host of medical groups. The CDC also revised its language on autism and vaccines, saying links have been ignored and drawing more fire from health leaders.

Kennedy has earned credit for promoting the importance of a healthy diet and moving away from processed foods. Kennedy held an event this week touting the importance of eating healthy foods, with former boxing champ Mike Tyson featured prominently.

Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, the president of the American Medical Association, also attended Kennedy’s event this week. Mukkama previously said at the HLTH conference in October that he is willing to work with Kennedy on areas such as nutrition and helping people avoid chronic disease.

“This is where I'm excited to work with the administration on making America healthy,” he said. “I think this is a path to do that.”

‘Unprecedented threat’

Even as Kennedy has won support for efforts to promote healthy eating and keeping people healthy rather than treating them when they are sick, his other actions on vaccine policy and public health decisions have prompted widespread criticism among healthcare leaders and doctors.

In October, six surgeons general took the unusual step of warning that Kennedy is “endangering the health of the nation.” The six represented both Democratic and Republican administrations, demonstrating dissatisfaction with Kennedy isn’t defined by party lines.

“Never before have we issued a joint public warning like this. But the profound, immediate and unprecedented threat that Kennedy’s policies and positions pose to the nation’s health cannot be ignored,” they wrote.

Kennedy elicited more outrage when he led a revision of the childhood vaccine schedule, reducing the number of recommended shots and dropping the recommendation of influenza vaccines for all children. The American Academy of Pediatrics continues to publish its own guidance on childhood vaccines.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, and other groups have sued the Health Department in hopes of overturning the changes in vaccine policies.

Healthcare leaders also lambasted Kennedy when he canceled $500 million in mRNA vaccine projects, fired all the members of a key vaccine advisory panel, and changed COVID-19 vaccine guidance.

Matthew Cook, president of the Children’s Hospital Association, told Chief Healthcare Executive in a January interview that he was baffled to see the government drop its universal recommendation of the flu vaccine, especially in the midst of a difficult flu season.

But he also said he and other members of the association were frustrated by the way the childhood schedule was revised, and those concerns exemplify the concerns doctors and scientists have voiced over many of Kennedy’s policies.

“Although the recommendations have changed, the scientific evidence has not,” Cook said. “And the safety of these vaccines is still there. It's still proven. And so I think what frustrates the members is when there are changes that's not based on the scientific evidence.”

Physicians and healthcare leaders point to the rising number of measles as evidence of the results of growing vaccine hesitancy. Shawn Martin, executive vice president and CEO of the American Academy of Family Physicians, told Chief Healthcare Executive last month that the outbreak in South Carolina underscores the growing fallout of vaccine confusion.

“We see what happens when vaccination rates drop, and I worry that we'll see the return of largely eliminated, if not eradicated, infectious disease in populations in this country,” Martin says. “And I think that should worry us.”