{"id":19121,"date":"2025-12-25T17:39:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T17:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pickbydoc.com\/on-chronic-disease-prevention-rfk-jr-s-actions-speak-louder-than-words\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T17:39:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T17:39:09","slug":"on-chronic-disease-prevention-rfk-jr-s-actions-speak-louder-than-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pickbydoc.com\/?p=19121","title":{"rendered":"On chronic disease prevention, RFK Jr.’s actions speak louder than words"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s agenda, he says, is chronic disease prevention. He wants Americans to eat fewer ultra-processed foods<\/a>; to decline long-established childhood vaccines<\/a> against diseases like the measles, which we never see anymore<\/a>; and to drink public water supplies without fluoride, apparently as a boon to the dental profession<\/a>. HHS recently announced that it will spend $10-20 million on a “Take Back Your Health Campaign<\/a>” that is intended to “alert Americans to the role of processed foods in fueling the diabetes epidemic and other chronic diseases, inspire people to take personal responsibility for their diets, and drive measurable improvements in diabetes prevention and national health outcomes.”<\/p>\n

Diabetes is a big problem. I’m all for preventing diabetes through healthier eating. But the longest-running longitudinal study of diabetes prevention, the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes study<\/a>, was terminated in March<\/a> when the Trump administration froze hundreds of millions of dollars in federal health grants to Columbia University, where the study coordinating center is located:<\/p>\n

The lapse in funding means that the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study can no longer continue to collect patient data as planned; it can no longer pay staff to do blood work, collect urine samples, scan brains, or conduct neurocognitive tests. Even worse, the study\u2019s existing data are at risk. Scientists need funds to properly store and retrieve samples; they need money to pay for computer servers and to hire statisticians and analysts, who clean and curate the data.<\/i><\/p>\n

HHS has traditionally relied on panels of non-government experts to guide its work in prevention, and after the DOGE-driven cuts that resulted in the departure of 20 percent of its workforce<\/a>, it needs outside help more than ever. For decades, five independent scientific advisory panels made evidence-based recommendations on clinical preventive services, community preventive services, newborn screening tests, infection prevention, and immunizations. Two of these panels have already been dissolved, and the remaining three are on life support.<\/p>\n

I wrote a Medscape commentary<\/a> about current threats to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), which include the hobbling and proposed elimination of its convening agency (AHRQ) and a lawsuit that the Supreme Court should decide any day now. The USPSTF’s sister panel, the Community Preventive Services Task Force<\/a>, which “evaluates evidence and recommends effective interventions to improve health in the community, home, school, work, and health care settings<\/a>,” hasn’t been convened at all this year.<\/p>\n

The Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children (ACHDNC), which since 2003 had been making evidence-based recommendations about a list of conditions for which every newborn should be screened<\/a>, was disbanded by HHS in April<\/a> for no particular reason. As a result, states have been left on their own to evaluate new screening tests:<\/p>\n

Each year, newborn screening identifies about 14,000 infants<\/a> with serious conditions that benefit from early intervention. Early detection can prevent death or irreversible harm in disorders like metabolic diseases, immune deficiencies, and muscular atrophies. Eliminating the ACHDNC creates a dangerous vacuum in the nation\u2019s newborn screening system, stalling progress on adding life-saving tests to the RUSP and increasing the risk that diagnoses will be delayed or missed for some babies\u2014with potentially tragic results.<\/i><\/p>\n


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The same fate befell the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee <\/a>(HICPAC), which was created in 1991 to advise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on critical infection prevention and control practices. Over the past three-plus decades<\/a>, HICPAC “advised and worked with the CDC to develop clinical guidelines, training resources, and expert guidance that were subsequently widely used throughout health care settings.” Chronic diseases that can be prevented by reducing the risk of transmission in health care include HIV, hepatitis B and C, tuberculosis, and long COVID<\/a>. HICPAC was dissolved by HHS at the end of March.<\/div>\n
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Finally, there is the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which RFK Jr. first bypassed by making unilateral changes to the COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women<\/a>, then remade by firing the entire committee<\/a> and replacing them with a group that includes a physician who proudly identifies as an anti-vaxxer<\/a>. This morning, 6 former chairs of the ACIP wrote an Op Ed in STAT<\/a> that warns about millions of Americans losing access to safe, effective vaccines and the ability to develop new ones in response to future infectious threats:<\/div>\n

Without transparent, evidence-based processes, vaccines may become inaccessible, unaffordable, or unavailable. Public trust will erode, innovation will stall, and lives will be lost unnecessarily. The systematic unraveling of our vaccine infrastructure endangers our freedom to protect ourselves and our communities. We urge congressional leaders to reflect on how these fragmented decisions collectively dismantle our ability to prevent disease and save lives. <\/i><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Public health advocates frequently bemoan political obstacles to investing in evidence-based initiatives<\/a> aimed at preventing chronic diseases. Today we have an HHS Secretary who is clearly interested in chronic disease prevention, but equally uninterested in evidence or established mechanisms for translating evidence into policy. As a former ACIP member recently told STAT<\/a>, the message is clear: “Scientific expertise is no longer of use” unless it happens to align with what RFK Jr. already believes to be true. His terrible actions speak louder than words.<\/div>\n

Read full article at source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s agenda, he says, is chronic disease prevention. He wants Americans to eat fewer ultra-processed foods; to decline long-established childhood vaccines against diseases like the measles, which we never see anymore; and to drink public water supplies without fluoride, apparently as a boon to the dental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1747],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fitness-lifestyle"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pickbydoc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pickbydoc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pickbydoc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pickbydoc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pickbydoc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pickbydoc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pickbydoc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pickbydoc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pickbydoc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}