EO 14212: Establishing the President's Make America Healthy Again Commission

Signed 2025-02-13 Executive Orders

Analysis Document Document Links

TLDR

This executive order creates the “Make America Healthy Again Commission” to address poor U.S. health trends, focusing on children’s chronic diseases. Led by the HHS Secretary, it requires delivery of a children’s health assessment within 100 days and a comprehensive strategy within 180 days.

This executive order establishes the “Make America Healthy Again Commission” to address concerning health trends in the United States.

The order cites alarming health statistics showing Americans lagging behind other developed nations:

U.S. life expectancy (78.8 years) trails comparable countries (82.6 years)
60% of Americans have at least one chronic disease, 40% have multiple chronic diseases
The U.S. had the highest cancer rates globally in 2021, with an 88% increase from 1990-2021

The order particularly emphasizes deteriorating children’s health:

40.7% of children (30 million) have at least one health condition
Autism rates increased from 1-4 per 10,000 in the 1980s to 1 in 36 children currently
3.4 million children are on ADHD medication, up from 3.2 million in 2019-2020

Leadership:

Chaired by Secretary of Health and Human Services
Executive Director: Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy

Key objectives:

Study causes of childhood chronic disease
Develop transparent research practices
Eliminate conflicts of interest in health research
Work with farmers to improve food quality
Expand treatment options and insurance coverage

Timeline and deliverables:

Within 100 days: Submit “Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment”
Within 180 days: Deliver comprehensive strategy to address childhood chronic disease

Strengths:

Comprehensive approach involving multiple agencies
Focus on transparency and data-driven solutions
Recognition of environmental and lifestyle factors

Potential concerns:

Ambitious timeline for complex health issues
No specific funding mechanisms outlined
Heavy emphasis on childhood diseases may overshadow adult health concerns
Vague implementation details for proposed solutions

This executive order represents a significant shift in federal health policy, focusing on prevention and root causes rather than just disease management. The success will largely depend on implementation and cooperation across agencies.

ACTIONS

2025-03-09: Many Health and Human Services employees receive $25K buyout offer | AP News — The Trump administration has offered voluntary separation payments of up to $25,000 to approximately 80,000 federal workers at the Health and Human Services Department, with a response deadline of 5 p.m. Friday. This effort to reduce the federal workforce comes as HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has indicated plans for deep staff cuts, while the CDC is simultaneously handling a measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico, and Congress debates significant Medicaid reductions.
2025-03-01: RFK | MMR vaccine “crucial” in measles prevention after Texas outbreak — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. advocated for the MMR vaccine in response to a growing measles outbreak in Texas, despite his history of vaccine skepticism. At least 146 measles cases have been identified in Texas since January, including a fatal case of an unvaccinated school-aged child in Lubbock.
2025-03-01: Kennedy Jr backtracks and says US measles outbreak is now a ‘top priority’ for health department |The Guardian — US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has reversed his stance on the measles outbreak, now declaring it a “top priority” after initially dismissing it as “not unusual,” following the first US measles death in a decade. The health department is sending 2,000 doses of the MMR vaccine to Texas, where over 140 cases have been reported since January, with approximately 95% of infected individuals being unvaccinated.
2025-02-26: Multimillion-dollar Biden-era COVID-19 vax project halted by Trump’s HHS — Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has paused a multimillion-dollar contract for a new oral COVID-19 vaccine development by Vaxart Inc., issuing a 90-day stop-work order to review the project that was part of the Biden administration’s $4.7 billion Project NextGen initiative. The clinical trial involving 10,000 participants was set to begin but will now be on hold while Kennedy and health officials examine initial findings.
2025-02-26: Trump Team Weighs Pulling Funds for Moderna Bird Flu Vaccine — US health officials are reevaluating a $590 million contract for bird flu shots that the Biden administration awarded to Moderna Inc. in January 2025, as part of a broader examination of spending on mRNA-based vaccines. The review comes amid concerns from the Trump administration about the Biden administration’s oversight of vaccine production agreements, with Moderna’s stock falling as much as 6.6% in after-hours trading following the news.
2025-02-26: Meeting of US FDA vaccine advisers canceled, committee member says | Reuters — The FDA has canceled a pivotal advisory committee meeting that was set to discuss which flu strains to include in next season’s vaccine. The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting was scheduled for March 13, but committee members were notified of the cancellation without explanation.
2025-02-20: Trump administration terminates CDC flu vaccine campaign : Shots - Health News : NPR — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has halted its successful “Wild to Mild” flu vaccination campaign following a review by the Department of Health and Human Services under newly appointed secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The campaign, which used contrasting images of wild animals and their tame counterparts to illustrate how vaccines can reduce flu severity, was pulled despite the current flu season being particularly severe with hospitalization rates at a 15-year high.
2025-02-18: RFK Jr. says panel will examine childhood vaccine schedule | AP News — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., despite promising Senator Bill Cassidy he would not change the nation’s vaccination schedule to secure his confirmation as health secretary, announced plans to investigate childhood vaccines through a new “Make America Healthy Again” commission. Speaking to HHS employees during a measles outbreak in West Texas, Kennedy stated “nothing is going to be off limits” in examining vaccines, pesticides, food additives, microplastics, antidepressants, and electromagnetic waves to determine if they contribute to chronic illnesses like diabetes and obesity.
2025-02-14: HHS ordered CDC to take down all flu vaccine campaign materials from its website — The CDC’s “Wild to Mild” flu vaccination campaign was terminated just days after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became health secretary. The campaign, which used contrasting images of wild and tame animals to illustrate how vaccines reduce flu severity, was halted during one of the worst flu seasons in decades, with materials being removed from the CDC website despite the campaign’s reported success in reaching vulnerable populations.

REFERENCES

2025-03-13: HHS braces for a reorganization | POLITICO — The Trump administration is preparing to significantly reduce the Department of Health and Human Services workforce, with an announcement expected soon. Under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the administration plans agency-wide cuts targeting multiple departments including the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (potentially reducing staff from 180 to 30) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
2025-03-16: Scientists Say NIH Officials Told Them To Scrub mRNA References on Grants | KFF Health News — NIH officials have reportedly instructed scientists to remove all references to mRNA vaccine technology from grant applications, suggesting the Trump administration may abandon this field of medical research despite its role in saving millions of lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Scientists are expressing concerns about potential funding cuts to mRNA research, attributing this shift to political pressure from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose anti-vaccine stance has already affected other research areas and created a climate of fear among vaccine scientists.
2025-03-11: The Diseases Are Coming - The Atlantic — This article discusses how the Trump administration’s cutbacks to global health institutions like USAID, WHO, and CDC are severely undermining America’s ability to detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks worldwide. The author, a physician who survived Ebola, warns that these “slash-and-burn” policies have rapidly transformed the US from a global health leader into an “untrustworthy has-been,” leaving both America and the world more vulnerable to future pandemics.
2025-03-11: LA County confirms first measles case in resident | CBS Los Angeles — Los Angeles County has confirmed its first measles case in a resident who returned from an international trip on March 5. Health officials have identified several exposure locations including LAX, Cloud 9 Nail Salon in North Hollywood, and Superior Grocery in El Monte. Public health authorities advise those who may have been exposed to check their vaccination status and monitor for symptoms such as high fever, cough, runny nose, watery eyes, and a characteristic rash that typically starts on the face.
2025-03-10: ‘This is just eugenicism’: RFK skewered as he blames diet and exercise for measles deaths | Raw Story — The article discusses Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s controversial comments suggesting that poor diet and lack of exercise may be to blame for a Texas child’s death from measles. Kennedy’s remarks sparked significant backlash on social media, with critics condemning his suggestion that “measles is very difficult to kill a healthy person” and his implication that the child who died may have suffered from malnutrition.
2025-03-05: State of play of Bird Flu in the US - and how the Trump administration is increasing the danger for everybody — The text discusses the current state of bird flu in the US, highlighting its spread among poultry, dairy herds, and humans. It also criticizes the Trump administration’s response, arguing that their policies are exacerbating the risk of a potential pandemic by weakening surveillance, research, and public health measures.
2025-03-05: Restored CDC | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | CDC — a group of archivists has recreated the original CDC website and is hoting it in the EU.
2025-02-28: Confirmed measles case in King County infant prompts health warnings, parental concern — Health officials in King County are urging caution after the first confirmed measles case in Washington state this year, involving an infant who may have exposed others at several locations following overseas travel. The highly contagious respiratory disease poses greatest risk to unvaccinated individuals, with health experts emphasizing that the MMR vaccine provides 97% protection after two doses while vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the COVID-19 pandemic.
2025-02-27: Avian flu risk ‘high’: 20 dead geese found on Ogunquit Beach — The discovery of approximately 20 dead geese on Ogunquit Beach in Maine is suspected to be due to avian flu (HPAI), with authorities ranking the risk level as “high” while continuing to monitor the situation. This follows a similar incident at Short Sands Beach in York where five dead ducks were found, and while transmission to humans is rare, the current H5N1 strain has caused 70 human cases in the U.S. since March 2024, including one documented death.
2025-02-26: A person dies of measles in West Texas outbreak — A person has died of measles in West Texas as part of a fast-moving outbreak that has infected at least 124 people, mostly children, with at least 18 hospitalizations. This marks the first measles death in the United States in a decade, occurring in an outbreak where all hospitalized children at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock were unvaccinated and admitted due to breathing difficulties.
2025-02-25: America’s Food Safety Is Now in the Hands of Donald Trump Jr.’s Hunting Buddy | Vanity Fair — Kyle Diamantas, a Florida attorney and hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr., has been appointed as acting deputy commissioner for human foods at the FDA despite limited regulatory experience. His appointment comes amid mass purges at health agencies, including the dismissal of 89 staff members from the Human Foods Program, raising concerns about food safety oversight for 80% of the nation’s food supply.
2025-02-22: They Worked to Prevent Death. The Trump Administration Fired Them. | ProPublica — The Trump administration has conducted a widespread purge of federal health workers, firing approximately 750 CDC workers, over 1,000 NIH staffers, and numerous employees at CMS and FDA, with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vowing to gut federal health centers. The firings have severely impacted critical public health programs including tobacco regulation, maternal health initiatives, and organ donation systems, with terminated employees warning that these cuts will lead to increased risks to public health and potentially cost lives.
2025-02-22: Alarm as bird flu now ‘endemic in cows’ while Trump cuts staff and funding | US news | The Guardian — A new variant of H5N1 bird flu has become endemic in dairy cows across multiple U.S. states, with experts warning the situation is unlikely to be contained without intervention, particularly concerning given Trump administration cuts to CDC and USDA staff responding to the outbreak. The virus has shown concerning patterns of transmission between birds, cows, and humans, with multiple spillover events in Nevada and Arizona involving the D1.1 variant, while simultaneously occurring during the worst flu season in 15 years - raising risks of viral reassortment and mutation.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, itishereby ordered:

Section 1.

Purpose.

American life expectancy significantly lags behind other developed countries, with pre‑COVID-19 United States life expectancy averaging 78.8 years and comparable countries averaging 82.6 years. This equates to 1.25 billion fewer life years for the United States population. Six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease, and four in 10 have two or more chronic diseases. An estimated one in five United States adults lives with a mental illness.

These realities become even more painful when contrasted with nations around the globe. Across 204 countries and territories, the United States had the highest age-standardized incidence rate of cancer in 2021, nearly double the next-highest rate. Further, from 1990-2021, the United States experienced an 88percent increase in cancer, the largest percentage increase of any country evaluated. In 2021, asthma was more than twice as common in the United States than most of Europe,Asia, or Africa. Autism spectrum disorders had the highestprevalence in high-income countries, including the UnitedStates, in 2021. Similarly, autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, and multiple sclerosis are more commonly diagnosed in high-income areas such as Europe and North America. Overall, the global comparison data demonstrates that the health of Americans is on an alarming trajectory that requires immediate action.

This concern applies urgently to America’s children. In 2022, an estimated 30 million children (40.7 percent) had at least one health condition, such as allergies, asthma, or an autoimmune disease. Autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 in 36 children in the United States — a staggering increase from rates of 1 to 4 out of 10,000 children identified with thecondition during the 1980s. Eighteen percent of late adolescents and young adults have fatty liver disease, close to30 percent of adolescents are prediabetic, and more than 40percent of adolescents are overweight or obese.

These health burdens have continued to increase alongside the increased prescription of medication. For example, in the case of Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, over 3.4 million children are now on medication for the disorder — up from 3.2 million children in 2019-2020 — and the number of children being diagnosed with the condition continues to rise.

This poses a dire threat to the American people and our way of life. Seventy-seven percent of young adults do not qualify for the military based in large part on their health scores. Ninety percent of the Nation’s $4.5 trillion in annual healthcare expenditures is for people with chronic and mental health conditions. In short, Americans of all ages are becoming sicker, beset by illnesses that our medical system is not addressing effectively. These trends harm us, our economy, and our security.

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. 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 healthcare system promotes health rather than just managing disease.

Sec. 2.

Policy.

It shall be the policy of the Federal Government to aggressively combat the critical health challenges facing our citizens, including the rising rates of mental health disorders, obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. To doso, executive departments and agencies (agencies) that address health or healthcare must focus on reversing chronic disease. Under this policy:

(a) all federally funded health research should empower Americans through transparency and open-source data, and should avoid or eliminate conflicts of interest that skew outcomes and perpetuate distrust;

(b) the National Institutes of Health and other health-related research funded by the Federal Government should prioritize gold-standard research on the root causes of why Americans are getting sick;

(d) agencies shall ensure the availability of expanded treatment options and the flexibility for health insurance coverage to provide benefits that support beneficial lifestyle changes and disease prevention.

Sec. 3.

Establishment and Composition of the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission.

(a) There is hereby established the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission (Commission), chaired by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (Chair), with the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy serving as Executive Director (Executive Director).

(b) In addition to the Chair and the Executive Director, the Commission shall include the following officials, or their designees:

(i) the Secretary of Agriculture;

(ii) the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development;

(iii) the Secretary of Education;

(iv) the Secretary of Veterans Affairs;

(v) the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency;

(vi) the Director of the Office of Management and Budget;

(vii) the Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy;

(viii) the Director of the National Economic Council;

(ix) the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers;

(x) the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy;

(xi) the Commissioner of Food and Drugs;

(xii) the Director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;

(xiii) the Director of the National Institutes of Health; and

(xiv) other members of my Administration invited to participate, at the discretion of the Chair and the Executive Director.

Sec. 4.

Fighting Childhood Chronic Disease.

The initial mission of the Commission shall be to advise and assist the President on how best to exercise his authority to address the childhood chronic disease crisis. Therefore, the Commission shall:

(a) study the scope of the childhood chronic disease crisis and any potential contributing causes, including the American diet, absorption of toxic material, medical treatments, lifestyle, environmental factors, Government policies, food production techniques, electromagnetic radiation, and corporate influence or cronyism;

(b) advise and assist the President on informing the American people regarding the childhood chronic disease crisis, using transparent and clear facts; and

Sec. 5.

Initial Assessment and Strategy from the Make America Healthy Again Commission.

(a) Make our Children Healthy Again Assessment. Within 100 days of the date of this order, the Commission shall submit to the President, through the Chair and the Executive Director, the Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment, which shall:

(i) identify and describe childhood chronic disease in America compared to other countries;

(ii) assess the threat that potential over-utilization of medication, certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures pose to children with respect to chronic inflammation or other established mechanisms of disease, using rigorous and transparent data, including international comparisons;

(iii) assess the prevalence of and threat posed bythe prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs;

(iv) identify and report on best practices for preventing childhood health issues, including through proper nutrition and the promotion of healthy lifestyles;

(v) evaluate the effectiveness of existing educational programs with regard to nutrition, physical activity, and mental health for children;

(vi) identify and evaluate existing Federal programs and funding intended to prevent and treat childhood health issues for their scope and effectiveness;

(vii) ensure transparency of all current data and unpublished analyses related to the childhood chronic disease crisis, consistent with applicable law;

(viii) evaluate the effectiveness of current Federal Government childhood health data and metrics, including those from the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics and the National Survey of Children’s Health;

(ix) restore the integrity of science, including byeliminating undue industry influence, releasing findings and underlying data to the maximum extent permitted under applicable law, and increasing methodological rigor; and

(x) establish a framework for transparency and ethics review in industry-funded projects.

(b) Make our Children Healthy Again Strategy. Within 180days of the date of this order, the Commission shall submit to the President, through the Chair and the Executive Director, a Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy (Strategy), based on the findings from the Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment described in subsection (a) of this section. The Strategy shall address appropriately restructuring the Federal Government’s response to the childhood chronic disease crisis, including by ending Federal practices that exacerbate the health crisis or unsuccessfully attempt to address it, and by adding powerful new solutions that will end childhood chronic disease.

Sec. 6.

Additional Reports.

(a) Following the submission to the President of the Strategy, and any final strategy reports thereafter, the Chair and the Executive Director shall recommend to the President updates to the Commission’s mission, including desired reports.

(b) The Commission shall not reconvene, following submission of the Strategy, until an updated mission is submitted to the President through the Executive Director.

Sec. 7.

General Provisions.

(a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

© This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

THE WHITE HOUSE,

February 13, 2025.