Trump admin releases long awaited MAHA roadmap. The new strategy stops short of surprise regulations and leaves pesticides alone (Sep 2025) The Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy Report Article 

Michael Harrop

Michael Harrop

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This is the follow-up to the May 2025 Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment https://forum.humanmicrobiome.info/threads/white-house-releases-rfk-jr-led-report-on-chronic-disease-may-2025-the.1039/

It's largely unchanged from the extremely disappointing draft release: https://forum.humanmicrobiome.info/threads/white-house-releases-rfk-jr-led-report-on-chronic-disease-may-2025-the.1039/post-2934


The USDA article says:
a sweeping plan with more than 120 initiatives to reverse the failed policies that fueled America’s childhood chronic disease epidemic. The strategy outlines targeted executive actions to advance gold-standard science, realign incentives, increase public awareness, and strengthen private-sector collaboration.

Key Focus Areas of the Strategy:

Restoring Science & Research: Expanding NIH and agency research into chronic disease prevention, nutrition and metabolic health, food quality, environmental exposures, autism, gut microbiome, precision agriculture, rural and tribal health, vaccine injury, and mental health.

Historic Executive Actions: Reforming dietary guidelines; defining ultra-processed foods; improving food labeling; closing the GRAS loophole; raising infant formula standards; removing harmful chemicals from the food supply; increasing oversight and enforcement of direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising laws; improving food served in schools, hospitals, and to veterans; and reforming Medicaid quality metrics to measure health outcomes.

Process Reform & Deregulation: Streamlining organic certification; easing barriers to farm-to-school programs and direct-to-consumer sales; restoring whole milk in schools; supporting mobile grocery and processing units; modernizing FDA drug and device approval; and accelerating EPA approvals for innovative agricultural products.

Public Awareness & Education: Launching school-based nutrition and fitness campaigns, Surgeon General initiatives on screen time, prioritizing pediatric mental health, and expanding access to reliable nutrition and health information for parents.

Private Sector Collaboration: Promoting awareness of healthier meals at restaurants, soil health and land stewardship, and community-led initiatives, and scaling innovative solutions to address root causes of chronic disease.
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The other coverage is not as generous:
The final report does not always clearly explain how the government will implement its recommendations. Though the report pushes for new research initiatives and public awareness campaigns, it does not include many specific policies. It says the government will commission a slew of new studies to better understand microplastics, air quality, the cumulative toll of chemicals and even electromagnetic radiation.

In some areas, it advances long-held industry priorities that public health advocates say could increase the very health risks that have fueled the MAHA movement, such as accelerating reviews of new chemicals.

“This report is a major missed opportunity for the Trump administration and a clear sign that Big Ag, Bayer, and the pesticide industry are firmly embedded in the White House and intentionally short-circuiting Trump’s campaign promise to the millions of MAHA voters who helped him return to power,” said David Murphy, a former finance director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign and an advocate for stricter pesticide regulation.

Documents obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News reveal that the White House stacked its internal team responsible for helping craft the report with several former industry lobbyists, including one that’s now the political official overseeing EPA’s chemicals office.

It says government programs should provide “whole, healthy food” for low-income Americans, but Trump’s domestic policy bill slashed funding for food assistance. It says we should study the health effects of poor water and air quality, but the administration has rolled back pollution regulations.
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PBS:
It looks exactly like the report that Michelle Obama's task force reported in 2010.

It talks about a lot of other things in very general terms. It's a report about intentions. It's not about actions. And what you wonder is, how on earth are they going to do these things? What do they plan to do? The word regulation is only mentioned once in the context of the generally recognized as safe loophole.

They talk about really important issues like stopping marketing to children, but they do that in, we're going to investigate. We're going to explore. We're going to think about. We're going to maybe do something about food industry marketing of junk foods to kids, which I think would really make a big difference.


He points to the EPA on pesticides, but the administration has gutted its staff and the EPA budget. So how do you see those contradictions complicating Kennedy's ambitions?

The best example of that is that they want to promote farm-to-school programs. That was the first program that the Trump administration cut in the Department of Agriculture, a totally win-win program in which farmers gained and schools gained. And that program is gone.

But I understand that Secretary Rollins says it's going to come back. That would be nice. I want to see the action. That's what really counts.
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