On May 22, the Presidential Commission to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) released its report on childhood chronic disease, per the President’s executive order in February. The “Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment” report details potential drivers of childhood chronic disease in America: improper diets, environmental toxins, reduced physical activity levels, high chronic stress levels, and increased use of pharmaceuticals. Notably, this section also includes information on childhood vaccines and argues that the vaccine schedule has grown rapidly without sufficient guardrails or nuanced debate.
The assessment calls for the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to close research gaps in children’s health; bolster pediatric drug safety monitoring; utilize artificial intelligence to provide real-time surveillance; invest in alternative testing models; and expand data initiatives, like the NIH-CMS autism data initiative, to study childhood chronic diseases.
The MAHA Commission will now work to create the Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy based on the report’s findings, with publication due in less than 80 days. Following the report’s release, RFK Jr. released a statement on May 27 that the CDC will no longer recommend the COVID-19 vaccine for “healthy” children and pregnant women.