Polling of likely voters indicates that the Health and Human Services secretary can be an asset to Republicans when he’s talking about improving the nation’s food supply or labeling ultraprocessed foods. But when he’s talking about removing recommendations for routine childhood vaccinations, he can be a detriment.

So, when I learned Kennedy would be taking his show on the road to my home state of Ohio, where populist figures tend to perform well, I knew I had to be there.

How would a politician who built his reputation seeding widespread doubts about routine childhood immunizations stay away from one of the core messages he’s preached for years?

Well, it turns out, he starts by reading a book about a trash truck to preschoolers.

The trip took us across northern Ohio, from a regenerative farm in Huron owned by two brothers who grow colorful vegetables to聽the Cleveland Clinic, where Kennedy masked up聽entering an operating room聽of聽a heart surgery patient.

In the end, though, Kennedy couldn’t escape the vaccine talk.

Speaking at the City Club of Cleveland, Kennedy raised doubts about the safety of vaccines that had been 鈥� up until last year 鈥� universally recommended to prevent hepatitis B, an incurable disease.

He called for parents to “be given that choice” on聽administering聽the vaccine聽to newborns,聽a remark that gave way to cheers and applause聽from聽half the room.

The other half groaned and booed.

When I sat down with the health secretary for a few minutes in an Ohio farmhouse, Kennedy ticked off his accomplishments during his first year in office; redesigning federal nutrition guidelines and defining ultraprocessed foods for the American public were among them.

As his list grew longer, I thought about the mothers I’d talked to over the last year who had become increasingly nervous about taking their infants out in crowded places amid a raging measles outbreak and the growing threat from other infectious diseases.

What was his message for those parents, I asked?

“I would say everybody should be vaccinated 鈥� against measles,” Kennedy told me. “But we need to pay more and more attention to chronic disease. All of the vaccine-preventable, infectious diseases put together kill probably 10,000 Americans a year.” 

The number of deaths is , according to scientific researchers.

RFK Jr. Swaps Vaccine Talk for Healthy Foods and Reading to Tots in Push To Woo Voters

He tested robotic hands on a heart surgery patient and chewed on microgreens in Ohio, but Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. couldn’t dodge questions about the Trump administration’s more controversial policies.

By Amanda Seitz May 13, 2026

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“What do you guys want to be when you grow up?” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked a carpet full of preschoolers.

“A dinosaur!” the boy replied, squeezing tighter.

Just weeks ago, Kennedy sat before lawmakers on Capitol Hill and about a dangerous uptick in infectious diseases among American children.

Now, with midterm primaries underway, Kennedy was seated in a toddler-sized chair in Ohio, on a mission to change the subject.

Advised to stay away from the anti-vaccine rhetoric that rocketed him to political stardom, Kennedy has been dispatched by the White House to evangelize about the least controversial 鈥� and most popular 鈥� parts of his agenda. Republicans hope Kennedy’s “Take Back Your Health” tour will help them hang on to voters, many of whom are deeply .

So there Kennedy was in early May, crisscrossing a strip of northern Ohio that includes one of the few congressional districts that Republicans are confident they can flip in November, rotating through a wardrobe of blue suits and blue jeans.

He inspected the kitchen of a Toledo daycare center, where hundreds of the city’s tiniest residents learn and play through the federally funded Head Start program. Under the careful watch of a surgeon, and with the machine disconnected, Kennedy briefly tested the teaching console of the renowned Cleveland Clinic’s robotic hands with a live patient splayed open for heart surgery in the room. And he munched on pesticide-free squash blossoms from a 400-acre farm.

“I am dismantling a corrupt system and replacing it with something better, replacing it with something that actually addresses the declining healthy American population,” Kennedy said from the dining room table of a farmhouse during an exclusive interview with 麻豆女优 Health News. He pointed to what he views as his biggest accomplishments over the past year: pressuring some companies to remove dyes from certain foods, updating nutritional guidance, and defining ultraprocessed foods.

“People are paying attention to what they eat, and the industry is listening; the industry is changing.”

But hundreds of miles from Washington’s partisan interrogations, Kennedy couldn’t escape the uncomfortable contradictions and consequences of the Trump administration’s policies.

Taboo Budget Cuts

The classrooms of the Clever Bee Academy displayed freshly printed posters featuring Kennedy’s “Eat Real Food” slogan and the redesigned food pyramid.

Kennedy came with an offering, a $30,000 federal grant to help the center upgrade its kitchen and community garden.

Perched in front of staff and parents, he distanced himself from a last year that could have been devastating to many of Clever Bee’s young students, most of whom live in poverty: the proposal to eliminate the $12 billion Head Start program.

“We were asked to cut our agencies substantially,” Kennedy said. “The two programs that I went to the wall to protect, and find the money somewhere else, was the Indian Health Services, which is always starved for funding, and Head Start.”

The next day, Kennedy stood before goats on a farm in Medina, Ohio, cared for by people sobering up from drug or alcohol misuse at the Hope Recovery Community.

He was there to promise more investments from an administration that has steeply cut staff and budgets over the past year.

Kennedy, who still attends daily Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to cope with a heroin addiction that gripped him for 14 years, said he hopes to replicate the recovery center’s model nationwide, describing it as an “essential role of government to make sure those services are there.”

Broader access to addiction treatment is part of the Trump administration’s newly released . But recovery advocates are skeptical more people will get help, with millions expected to lose health insurance under Trump’s watch because of rising Affordable Care Act premiums and the nearly $900 billion in Medicaid cuts under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Kennedy dismissed those challenges, pointing to a $100 million investment in addiction treatment services, including sober housing, announced this year.

“We’re trying to make it more accessible,” Kennedy told 麻豆女优 Health News.

Trouble in MAHA Paradise

Rows of beds featuring green and purple microgreens awaited Kennedy at The Chef’s Garden, a Huron, Ohio, farm that rejects chemical use in growing its produce.

The health secretary plucked handfuls and tossed them into his mouth, quickly chewing before a new sample was brought before him.

“We are absolutely thrilled that someone at this level of government cares about how food is grown and where it is coming from,” said Bob Jones Jr., a co-owner of The Chef’s Garden.

Seeing more farmers produce chemical-free leafy greens has topped the wish list of those who support Kennedy and the Make America Healthy Again movement, and many who backed Trump in 2024. But in a move that’s threatening to fracture that constituency, Trump has pushed to protect the production of glyphosate, a weed-killing, potentially cancer-causing chemical commonly sprayed on crops and lawns.

Though the group MAHA Ohio extols Kennedy’s agenda and endorses candidates aligned with his movement, director Elizabeth Frost acknowledged tensions between MAHA and conservative policies.

The glyphosate issue is an example “where you have the conservative interests to look out for the interests of the industry, and you have your MAHA interest to be cognizant of the downstream health impacts,” said Frost, who volunteered on Kennedy’s presidential campaign.

Some prominent MAHA influencers have suggested that Trump’s White House staffers are stopping Kennedy from implementing more aggressive policies on certain issues, including further limiting vaccine use, a notion he dismissed.

“To say the White House has tied my hands 鈥� the only people who could say that are people who haven’t been paying attention for a year,” Kennedy said. “President Trump has let me do more than any HHS secretary in history.”

He added: “The only thing that people in the MAHA movement complain about is the president’s glyphosate order.”

Staying on Message

Republicans consider Kennedy an asset in the recently redrawn northern Ohio congressional district that Democrat Marcy Kaptur has represented for more than 40 years, and which as one of the most competitive in the nation.

Fresh off winning the Republican primary for the district last week, Derek Merrin smiled as he shook hands with Kennedy.

“We discussed protecting Lake Erie, strengthening rural hospitals, and our shared vision to improve food quality,” Merrin later posted on Facebook. “Let’s Make America Healthy Again!”

Still, even with Kennedy under advisement to avoid anti-vaccine rhetoric, the issue found him in Ohio. At a forum in Cleveland, family doctor Patricia Kellner said the best way to prevent hepatitis B is by vaccinating newborns 鈥� a recommendation that under Kennedy. She told Kennedy about treating patients with the disease.

“Some of them didn’t know because it can be asymptomatic. Some of them found out when they got liver cancer,” Kellner said. “So why are you opposed to a birth dose of hepatitis B?”

Kennedy responded by suggesting that the hepatitis B vaccine was not safe for babies and was necessary only for certain people.

“Hepatitis B is for high-risk groups like drug addicts or prostitutes, or for promiscuous homosexuals,” he added, eliciting gasps from the crowd.

While the risk of contracting hepatitis B is higher for those who inject drugs or men who have sex with men, the disease can be transmitted in other ways, including through contact with contaminated surfaces or childbirth.

Public health researchers that dropping the universal hepatitis B recommendation will result in hundreds of new infections in children, costing millions of dollars in additional health care costs.

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The Department of Health and Human Services to hospitals asking them to align their food purchases with the administration’s 2025-30 dietary guidelines to ensure continued eligibility for Medicaid and Medicare payments. “We commend the many hospitals who have made commitments to improve their food offerings, and expect every hospital system to do so,” HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said.聽

Top Kennedy adviser Calley Means took to social media to explain the initiative, urging the public to report hospitals that don’t comply with the guidance. The comment included a link to an HHS webpage with a toll-free number for reporting complaints typically used for medical bills.

The warnings drew sharp rebukes from critics who said the directive fails to consider that the specific dietary needs of patients are often different from those of the rest of the population.聽

“It’s always a struggle to get people to eat. Losing weight in the hospital raises the risk of mortality,” said Mary Talley Bowden, a sleep medicine specialist, who has with Make America Healthy Again causes but on X, posting: “Give me a break Calley. A hospital snitch line for soda?”聽

“It’s a little tyrannical,” she said in an interview.

HHS can withhold or threaten federal funding if hospitals violate mandatory minimum health and safety standards set by the agency. The standards stipulate that hospitals must protect patient privacy, for example, and uphold infection control. 

The standards do address hospital food, but they don’t explicitly refer to the 2025-30 established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.聽

Rather, the standards require that “individual patient nutritional needs must be met in accordance with recognized dietary practices,” and list other requirements for hospitals, such as having access to a qualified dietitian.聽

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “doesn’t have a legal basis to do this, but hospitals and nursing homes can’t afford to ignore it altogether because of what it signals about potential enforcement action,” said Nicholas Bagley, a University of Michigan law professor.

HHS’ Healthy Food Agenda Puts Hospitals on Notice About Patients’ Meals

The backlash was immediate after the Trump administration served notice that hospitals and nursing homes should limit sugary drinks and dietary supplements in favor of what the Department of Health and Human Services terms “real food.”

By Stephanie Armour May 4, 2026

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It is urging the public to report hospitals and nursing homes that serve sugary drinks, nutrition shakes, or meals that it says don’t meet dietary guidelines established last year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with officials vowing to withhold millions of dollars in federal funding if violations occur.

The initiative from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is spurring backlash from some doctors and medical providers who say it fails to account for patients’ unique dietary needs and is anathema to Republicans who have long embraced an anti-regulatory stance.

It’s also not clear that HHS has the regulatory authority to enforce its threat without going through a formal rulemaking process, lawyers and dietitians say.

“Most of this is political theater. HHS doesn’t have the power to do much,” said , a dietitian and research scientist who is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. “Also, if it’s to the point that you’re trying to control people’s choices, well, you look a little fascist.”

The agency to hospitals asking them to align their food purchases with the administration’s 2025-30 dietary guidelines to ensure continued eligibility for Medicaid and Medicare payments, Kennedy said at a March 30 press event.

“We are going to bring all the hospitals in the country in line with good food,” he said, describing the instructions as “essentially a .”

“If a hospital is serving patients sugary drinks, they are out of compliance with government standards and are putting their reimbursements in jeopardy,” top Kennedy adviser Calley Means “If you see patients being served sugary drinks, please post information below or let CMS know.”

The comment included a link to an HHS webpage with a toll-free number for reporting complaints typically used for medical bills. Withholding federal funding from hospitals is one of the most extreme enforcement tools available to regulators, one the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has seldom deployed.

Even serving liquid nutrition products like Ensure to patients could put hospitals in jeopardy, Means warned. “They need to change or lose reimbursement. Please report them if you see it,” he told an X user.

Medicare and Medicaid, combined, are the of hospital expenditures.

The notice came in the form of a “Conditions of Participation” update released by CMS to ensure hospital patients’ food adheres to the dietary guidelines, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said. “We commend the many hospitals who have made commitments to improve their food offerings, and expect every hospital system to do so,” he said.

Means did not respond directly to requests for comment from 麻豆女优 Health News, instead posting on X shortly after he was contacted: “鈥楾rump Derangement Syndrome’ has led Democrats to defend the medical importance of mass-serving soda and junk food to American patients.” In a text with 麻豆女优 Health News, he said, “That’s to cite if you want. I don’t have a comment.”

Still, some administration officials have made it clear they will not shy away from halting federal funding, a rarely taken step that can imperil the ability of a hospital to remain open.

A Carrot and a Stick

HHS can withhold or threaten federal funding if hospitals violate mandatory minimum health and safety standards set by the agency. The standards stipulate that hospitals must protect patient privacy, for example, and uphold infection control.

The standards do address hospital food, but they don’t explicitly refer to the 2025-30 established by the USDA.

Rather, the standards require that “individual patient nutritional needs must be met in accordance with recognized dietary practices,” and list other requirements for hospitals, such as having access to a qualified dietitian.

“CMS has never before interpreted this requirement as mandating adherence to any set of dietary guidelines,” according to an from law firm .

The CMS memo shows the agency is taking the “notable step” to incorporate the dietary guidelines “into the hospital regulatory framework without new rulemaking,” according to the brief.

Hospitals are likely to comply because they are loath to cross the federal government and want to avoid a legal tussle or enforcement action by Kennedy, some lawyers say.

“He doesn’t have a legal basis to do this, but hospitals and nursing homes can’t afford to ignore it altogether because of what it signals about potential enforcement action,” said , a University of Michigan law professor.

If federal funding were withheld, hospitals could always sue to try and challenge HHS’ authority.

“When the agency goes to the hospital and says, We’re going to take away your money for this, the hospital can sue and say, Look, nothing requires us to fry our fries in beef tallow or whatever,” Bagley said.

For hospitals looking to comply, the agency’s memo provides examples of what should and shouldn’t be served to patients.

Food as Medicine

What the guidance calls “don’ts”: sugar-sweetened beverages or juice. And “do’s”: water, unsweetened tea, milk, or coffee. Meals suggested in the memo include grilled salmon with quinoa or bean-based entrees with leafy greens.

Some nutritionists welcomed the focus on hospital food for patients. Marion Nestle, a public health advocate and molecular biologist, lauded the initiative, saying, “These sound terrific!” in an on her blog, .

Other health leaders and doctors pushed back, noting hospitalized patients often have more individualized nutrition needs that may not conform to federal dietary recommendations.

For “a patient struggling to swallow from just having a stroke, salmon and quinoa is the worst thing for them. They’re going to risk aspirating on it,” said Klatt, the University of Toronto dietitian.

Hospitals that neglect to provide certain standards of care, such as protein shakes to treat malnutrition or an unhealthy weight loss, could open themselves up to possible legal liability. Eighty percent of malnourished elderly patients gained weight and improved muscle mass on nutritional supplements such as Ensure, according to the published in Nutrición Hospitalaria, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Abbott, which , makes a range of products including shakes for people who “could be malnourished due to medical treatments, such as chemotherapy, and not be getting the calories they need because they don’t have much of an appetite,” company spokesperson John Koval said in a statement.

“It’s always a struggle to get people to eat. Losing weight in the hospital raises the risk of mortality,” said Mary Talley Bowden, a , who has with Make America Healthy Again causes but on X, posting: “Give me a break Calley. A hospital snitch line for soda?”

“It’s a little tyrannical,” she said in an interview.

The focus on hospital food came in late March as part of Kennedy’s MAHA initiative, in which he has touted changes to federal dietary guidelines that emphasize protein and healthy fats while eschewing processed foods.

Kennedy has leaned heavily into his work on changing eating habits, which fits into the MAHA gestalt and polls well with both Democratic and Republican voters. Eighty-six percent of registered voters surveyed said it should be easier for every American family to access fresh fruits and vegetables, released in September by Navigator Research.

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The plan was to begin handing out boxes of groceries at 11, but the truck delivering the food blew a tire en route. No one complained.

Perry Hall was among those waiting. His wife, Lilly Hall, volunteers with the distribution team. Perry has been dealing with a form of cancer called multiple myeloma. The Halls get by on around $1,500 a month from his Social Security benefits, plus assistance from the federal , or SNAP. But because of her age, Lilly, 59, recently became subject to new SNAP work requirements and at risk of losing her benefits.

As part of the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act, all “able-bodied adults” 64 or younger who don’t have dependents and don’t work, volunteer, or participate in job training at least 80 hours a month are now restricted to three months of benefits every three years from SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. Previously, the federal requirement applied to those 54 or younger. The new rule, which went into effect in November, also applies to parents of children 14 or older. And it removed exemptions for veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and young adults who’ve aged out of foster care.

Proponents of work requirements argue that they incentivize people who are “work-ready” to seek and keep jobs, reducing dependence on government assistance and upholding the “.”

Rhonda Rogombé serves as health and safety net policy analyst for the . She and her colleagues have studied the effects of SNAP work rules and found that requiring recipients to work does not lower an area’s unemployment rate.

Previous work requirements were suspended nationwide during the covid pandemic and reinstated in fall 2023. The researchers found that the average number of people employed in Mingo County each month actually went down after the requirement was reimposed.

A 2018 federal research project that examined several data sources, including SNAP data from nine states, found that work requirements “have no impact on labor force participation and the number of hours worked.”

There are a number of possible explanations, Rogombé said, “but when people are hungry, they’re not able to support themselves. When people are hungry, it’s harder to focus at work. It’s harder to engage in work activity, and we think that that’s part of it.”

Jobs are scarce in this southern West Virginia county. Lilly Hall found work at a Delbarton restaurant. But it’s unpaid until a waitress position opens 鈥� enough to preserve her benefits, but far from ideal.

On that mild Wednesday in late March, House of Hope provided chicken, eggs, bread, potatoes, fresh fruit and vegetables, and milk.

Among those in line were older residents and “some young people that have lost their way and they can’t get work and they just need help,” said Timothy Treleven, who operates the pantry with his wife, Christine, and Gail Lendearo.

House of Hope’s scheduled distribution day is the last Saturday of each month 鈥� supplemented by occasional weekday Facing Hunger visits 鈥� as money from monthly checks begins to run out and cupboards go bare.

On a typical Saturday, pantry staff and volunteers hand out up to 400 boxes of food.

“It’s an honor to do this,” Lendearo said. “It’s a blessing.”

Perry Hall’s cancer is now in remission, but for a while his treatment required that he and Lilly travel back and forth, 4陆 hours each way, to Morgantown. The couple’s van couldn’t make the trip, so they paid a friend for rides.

Mingo’s population is just under 22,000, down from around 27,000 in 2010. It once flourished, fueled by coal. Williamson, the county seat, was home to an opera house and businesses operated by immigrants from Italy, Russia, and Syria. The region is still referred to as “the coalfields,” but little is mined here these days. .

Rogombé and her colleagues found that Mingo County residents face significant barriers to securing what few jobs are available. These include unreported physical and mental impairments, housing insecurity, and a lack of high school diplomas and identification documents.

Filing the paperwork to receive benefits or to confirm compliance is difficult for many residents. The West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy’s research found that about 1 in 4 lack reliable internet access.

Additional changes lie ahead for the SNAP program. Currently, the federal government and the states share administrative costs equally, but in October states will assume 75% of those costs. And beginning in October 2027, they’ll be required to pay additional costs based on .

Kentucky, like West Virginia, is among the poorer states that will be most affected by the new requirements and costs. The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy estimates that with the expanded work requirements.

Jessica Klein, a researcher with the center, worries about the consequences. “We know SNAP has an impact on health, and not just because it decreases food insecurity,” she said. It worsens blood pressure rates, obesity, medication adherence, and more.

With the additional financial burden placed on states, “I think what we’ll see is some states changing rules that impact participation in order to have a smaller, more affordable program,” Klein said. “My fear is that some states will choose not to operate SNAP at all.”

In Mingo County, folks are stepping up. At least eight food pantries offer groceries to those in need.

Janet Gibson runs the Blessing Barn pantry in the Ben Creek community. “I can go from one end of the creek to the other” and tell you everyone’s name and a little something about them, she said. She takes pride in feeding her people.

Gibson said it can be hard to find even volunteer opportunities in the county, largely because of transportation challenges. A look at a local map can be misleading: A couple of dozen miles into a holler or up a ridge could take an hour or more.

“Whether you’re working full-time or not, you’re still spinning out gas to get to work,” Gibson said, “and gas ain’t cheap now.”

A single mother of three, Trista Shankle of Paducah, Kentucky, isn’t subject to the new SNAP requirements, but she worries about the fragility of the social safety net. She overcame challenges, is earning a master’s degree in social work, and works for an organization that connects community college students with benefits. Her family receives SNAP, Medicaid, housing support, and assistance from the USDA’s . If any one of those is cut, she said, she may have to drop out of school.

Shankle is certain she wouldn’t have advanced to where she is today without the benefits she and her family have received: “They bring a sense of calm and comfort. I know that my kids aren’t going to go hungry.”

The first week in April, Lilly Hall reported for work at Black Bear Trails Restaurant. She’s grateful for the opportunity. And when a waitress slot opens, “I’ll snag that position so quick it’ll make your head flip.”

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LISTEN: Taking a GLP-1? Doctors say don’t forget to move your body and tend to your mental health, too.

Severe ankle pain drove Jelon Smart to start taking a weight loss injection a year and a half ago.

Smart was 285 pounds and worked as a caterer in Savannah, Georgia. After she’d been standing on her feet for long hours, her ankles would be “as swollen as a football,” she said. She was walking with a limp. An orthopedic doctor diagnosed her with Achilles tendinitis and recommended losing weight to mitigate the symptoms. Smart began taking the brand-name GLP-1 Ozempic.

The appetite suppression resulted in her shedding pounds quickly, at first.

“I lost 30 pounds initially without changing anything,” said Smart, 48. But then she found herself unable to shed additional pounds.

GLP-1s have quickly become one of the most popular types of weight loss drug in America. Nearly 1 in 5 people have taken them at some point, , a health information nonprofit that includes 麻豆女优 Health News. But doctors say it takes more than a regular shot for patients to achieve their weight goals in the long run.

Here’s what to know.

The Old-School Rules of Weight Loss and Health Still Apply

Regular exercise, smart food choices, plenty of sleep 鈥� those basic, healthy lifestyle choices are not only going to help you lose weight on a weight loss drug but also help you keep it off, said Dafina Allen, an 鈥妎besity medicine physician who runs a clinic in Saginaw, Michigan. For example, some people find that they eat less on a GLP-1, “but they’re not improving their health because they’re not exercising. They’re not improving the quality of the food they’re eating,” Allen said. The path to weight loss is also guided by hormones, metabolism, and genetics.

After her weight loss on Ozempic plateaued, Smart realized she needed to start moving her body, too. 鈥�“I’m in the gym now six days a week,” she said. “I went from 285 to 175” pounds. The swelling and pain in her ankle went away as well.

Mental Health Matters, Too

The mind and body are deeply connected. Food and body image can be especially emotional, Allen said. “I can tell you about the patients that I helped lose 50 pounds, that I helped lose 100 pounds, and they still look in the mirror and are not happy.”

The key is seeking help for mental health along the way, said Gerald Onuoha, who practices internal medicine in Nashville, Tennessee. “Making sure that you’re talking to people about your problems, whether it’s a family member or a licensed professional, I think goes a long way,” he said.

Work With a Doctor To Closely Monitor Your Dosage

Onuoha said people can run into serious problems if they increase their GLP-1 dosage too quickly or don’t follow the recommended schedule. He’s seen patients come to the hospital with pancreatitis, gallstones, or acute kidney injury. 鈥�“I always ask patients that are on GLP-1s: How long have they been on them?” he said. “Are they adhering to the directions? Because those things determine whether or not you’re going to have those complications.”

Part of the issue, Allen said, is that GLP-1s are relatively easy to access 鈥� and often much cheaper 鈥� through online pharmacies or websites, but those providers may not educate patients about their dosage or side effects. “So they might just go online, find a random company that will ship it to their house, where they don’t even know what dose of the medication they’re taking, or even if the medicine is safe for them as the patient with the medical conditions they have,” she said.

People and Policy

GLP-1 drugs can be costly, and most insurance programs 鈥� public or private 鈥� don’t cover the medications for weight loss. Medicaid, the government program that covers 69 million Americans, covers GLP-1s for medically accepted conditions like diabetes, but only about a dozen state Medicaid programs cover GLP-1s for obesity treatment, . For older Americans with Medicare, the federal government is planning to allow temporary coverage of GLP-1s for weight loss starting in July.

Katherine Ruppelt at Nashville Public Radio contributed to this report.

HealthQ is a health series from reporters Cara Anthony and Blake Farmer, approachable guides to an unapproachable health care system. It’s a collaboration between Nashville Public Radio and 麻豆女优 Health News.

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“I have these conversations with children starting at 8, 10, 12 years old: What do you want to be when you grow up?” Duane said. If you’re a child who wants to be a doctor, for instance, “there are things you need to put in place. If you hope to have children one day, there are things that you need to consider and have the conversation early.”

The proposal from Duane, a specialist in who is affiliated with the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute, got a warm reception from the audience gathered for the Trump administration’s inaugural .

The three-day event hosted by the Department of Health and Human Services last week was designed to “explore breakthroughs in research, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of health conditions that affect women across the lifespan.” Government officials hosted an eclectic mix of wealthy philanthropists, alternative medicine influencers, health tech executives, and medical researchers to discuss a wide range of issues, from Lyme disease to gut health.

Seeking to reach women at a moment when President Donald Trump’s among a key voting bloc, the Make America Healthy Again movement, the administration-sponsored event elevated perspectives outside conventional standards of medical care and counter to many women’s health choices.

For example, during a 40-minute panel hosted by Alexis Joel, the wife of musician Billy Joel, several doctors raised concerns about how frequently hormonal birth control is used to treat women’s health symptoms. Two female physicians on the panel said they were uncomfortable with the idea of using birth control pills for their own treatment, noting that their “values” or “cultural perspective” did not align with use of the medication.

Nearly a third of U.S. women ages 18 to 49 report having used birth control pills in the previous 12 months, according to a . In addition to their use as a contraceptive, the pills are prescribed for , including preventing anemia from heavy periods and treating uterine fibroids.

Joel, who has about her experience with endometriosis, brought her own doctor, Tamer Seckin, to discuss the common, painful condition, in which thick tissue develops outside of the uterus. Seckin said women’s concerns about menstrual pain are often dismissed by doctors, leading to missed diagnoses.

Asima Ahmad, a doctor who specializes in fertility and co-founded Carrot, a company that offers job-based fertility benefits, offered another explanation for why the disease is overlooked.

“As providers, we should learn how to treat it, rather than covering it up with birth control pills or progesterone,” she said.

Hormonal birth control pills, which help slow the growth of new tissue, are for treating endometriosis, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Andrea Salcedo, a California OB-GYN on the panel who said she has endometriosis as well, said she declined birth control as a treatment. She noted her decision aligned with her “values,” in particular her desire to have more children.

“Is this all that we can do?” Salcedo said of being offered birth control.

Salcedo said she prescribes alternative treatments to her patients because she believes the root cause of infertility is directly related to gut health. Cod liver oil and vitamin A top her list, she said.

whether there is an association between vitamin deficiencies and endometriosis. Taking too much vitamin A can cause health problems, including if taken while pregnant.

Those supplements have been touted by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 鈥� including, falsely, as during an outbreak in Texas last year.

About a quarter of U.S. adults wrongly believe vitamin A can prevent measles infections, according to a .

The panel also coalesced around the idea that a lack of knowledge is the root problem: Girls do not receive enough education on how to become pregnant or identify the warning signs of infertility, the doctors suggested.

Education has become too hyperfocused on preventing pregnancy, Ahmad said.

“I was in junior high, and I was learning about trying not to get pregnant, and I was scared that if I sit in a room with a guy alone, I will,” she said. “They put all of this fear into it, but family planning isn’t just about preventing pregnancy. It’s about learning about how to build your family.”

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The tensions risk fraying Kennedy’s dynamic MAHA coalition, potentially driving away critical supporters who helped fuel President Donald Trump’s 2024 election win.

The movement’s grassroots membership includes suburbanites, women, and independents who are generally newer entrants to the GOP and laser-focused on achieving certain results around the nation’s food supply and vaccines.

Promoting healthy foods tops their list and will be at the center of the White House’s pitch to voters during the midterm election cycle.

“President Trump’s mass appeal partly lies in his willingness to question our country’s broken status quo,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement. “That includes food standards and nutrition guidelines that have helped fuel America’s chronic disease epidemic. Overhauling our food supply and nutrition standards to deliver on the MAHA agenda remains a key priority for both the President and his administration.”

At the same time, with most Americans , the White House has cooled on Kennedy’s aggressive policies to curb vaccines and MAHA’s interest in tamping down environmental chemicals that are linked to disease.

The result: Republicans are realizing just how demanding the MAHA vote can be. Moms Across America leader Zen Honeycutt warned that Republicans are facing their biggest setback yet with the MAHA movement, after Trump signed an executive order to support production of glyphosate, a herbicide the World Health Organization has .

“It has caused the biggest uproar in MAHA,” Honeycutt said during a CNN interview in late February.

A White House Warning

Trump’s top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, cautioned in December that an embrace of Kennedy’s anti-vaccine policies could cost politicians their jobs this year.

Eight in 10 MAHA voters and 86% of all voters believe vaccines save lives, his poll of 1,000 voters in 35 competitive districts found.

“In the districts that will decide the control of the House of Representatives next year, Republican and Democratic candidates who support eliminating long standing vaccine requirements will pay a price in the election,” on the poll stated.

The White House has since shaken up senior staffing at HHS, including removing from the deputy secretary role and his job as acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in which he curtailed the agency’s childhood vaccination recommendations. Ralph Abraham, a vaccine skeptic who as Louisiana’s surgeon general suspended its vaccination promotion program last year, stepped down as the CDC’s principal deputy director in late February.

, a doctor who said in congressional testimony that he doesn’t believe vaccines cause autism, is now running the CDC in addition to directing the National Institutes of Health.

Though Trump himself has frequently espoused doubts and mistruths about vaccines, polling around anti-vaccine policy has undoubtedly shaken the White House’s confidence during a tough midterm election year, said former , an Indiana Republican and retired doctor who left Congress last year.

Bucshon said Republicans can’t risk alienating voters, especially parents of young children who might be moved by Democratic attack ads on the topic at a time when hundreds of measles cases are popping up across the U.S.

“That’s the reason you’re seeing the White House get nervous about it,” Bucshon said. “This is just the political reality of it.”

Kennedy built some of his MAHA following with calls to end federal approval and recommendations for the covid vaccines during the pandemic. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a federal panel of outside experts who were handpicked by Kennedy to develop national vaccine recommendations, is expected to review and possibly withdraw its recommendation for covid shots. Its February meeting was postponed and is now scheduled for March 18-19, when the panel plans to discuss injuries from covid vaccines, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon confirmed on March 11.

“I’m not deaf to the calls that we need to get the covid vaccine mRNA products off the market. All I can say is stay tuned and wait for the upcoming ACIP meeting,” ACIP Vice Chair Robert Malone , a conservative account on the social platform X, before the meeting was postponed. “If the FDA won’t act, there are other entities that will.”

No Fury Like Scorned MAHA Moms

Bipartisan support is also extremely high — above 80% — for another core tenet of the MAHA agenda: eliminating the use of certain pesticides on crops.

But MAHA leaders were incensed when Trump issued a Feb. 18 promoting the production of glyphosate, a chemical used in weed killers sprayed on U.S. crops and which Kennedy has railed against and sued over because of its reported links to cancer.

“There’s gonna be ups and downs, and there is zero question that this week was a down,” Calley Means, a senior adviser to the health secretary and a former White House employee, told a MAHA rally in Austin, Texas, on Feb. 26. “I am not going to gaslight or sugarcoat it: This glyphosate thing was extremely disappointing. Bobby’s disappointed.”

Despite deep unhappiness from MAHA followers, Kennedy endorsed Trump’s executive order defending access to such pesticides.

“I support President Trump’s Executive Order to bring agricultural chemical production back to the United States and end our near-total reliance on adversarial nations,” Kennedy .

Without offering policy changes, Kennedy promised a future agricultural system that “is less dependent on harmful chemicals.”

White House officials are now trying to downplay the executive order.

“The President’s executive order was not an endorsement of any product or practice,” Desai said in a statement.

But that’s done little to dampen criticism from leading MAHA influencers who had hoped, with Kennedy’s influence in the administration, that the chemical would be banned.

Some Democrats see an opening.

of Maine earned cheers from MAHA loyalists for co-sponsoring legislation with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to undo the executive order.

“The Trump Admin. cannot keep paying lip service to while propping up Big Chemical like this and choosing corporate profits over Americans’ health,” .

, a prominent MAHA influencer who promotes healthy eating, responded on X with a “HELL YES.”

‘Eat Real Food’

The White House and Kennedy are refocusing their messaging to emphasize one of the most popular elements of the MAHA platform: food.

At the start of the year, Kennedy unveiled new dietary guidelines that emphasize vegetables, fruits, and meats while urging Americans to avoid ultraprocessed foods.

Kennedy has leaned into his new “Eat Real Food” campaign, launching a nationwide tour in January. Ahead of the late-February MAHA rally, he stopped at a barbecue joint in Austin where he took photos with stacks of smoked ribs and grilled sausages. Large “Eat Real Food” signs have been provided for crowds of supporters to hold up during major announcements at HHS’ headquarters this year.

Focusing on nutrition will please MAHA moms, suburban swing voters, and conservatives alike, said , a physician and former Republican representative from Texas.

“They keep them happy by talking about the food pyramid,” Burgess said. “That’s an area where there is broad, bipartisan support.”

Indeed, Fabrizio’s poll shows equal support — 95% — among respondents who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris and those who voted for Trump for requiring labeling of harmful ingredients in ultraprocessed foods.

Trump is keenly aware that Kennedy’s MAHA movement is key to his political survival. At a Cabinet meeting in January, Kennedy rattled off a list of his agency’s efforts researching autism and tackling high drug prices.

Trump leaned in at the table.

“I read an article today where they think Bobby is going to be really great for the Republican Party in the midterms,” , “so I have to be very careful that Bobby likes us.”

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“We saw a turnaround in his behavior, and our other children,” said Burkhammer, who has adopted or fostered 10 kids with his wife. “There are real impacts on real kids.”

The Republican turned his experience into legislation, sponsoring a bill to from food sold in the state. It became law in March, making West Virginia the first state to institute such a ban from all food products.

The bill was among a slew of state efforts to regulate synthetic dyes. In 2025, roughly 75 bills aimed at food dyes were introduced in 37 states, according to .

Chemical dyes and nutrition are just part of the broader “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Promoted by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., MAHA ideas have made their deepest inroads at the state level, with strong support from Republicans 鈥� and in some places, from Democrats. The $50 billion 鈥� created last year as part of the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act to expand health care access in rural areas 鈥� offers incentives to states that implement MAHA policies.

Federal and state officials are seeking a broad swath of health policy changes, including rolling back routine vaccinations and expanding the use of drugs such as ivermectin for treatments beyond their approved use. State lawmakers have introduced dozens of bills targeting vaccines, fluoridated water, and PFAS, a group of compounds known as “forever chemicals” that have been linked to cancer and other health problems.

In addition to West Virginia, six other states have targeted food dyes with new laws or executive orders, requiring warning labels on food with certain dyes or banning the sale of such products in schools. California has had a law regulating food dyes since 2023.

Most synthetic dyes used to color food have been . Some clinical studies have found a link between their use and . And in early 2025, in the last days of President Joe Biden’s term, the Food and Drug Administration known as Red No. 3.

Major food companies including have gotten on board, pledging to eliminate at least some color additives from food products over the next year or two.

“We anticipate that the momentum we saw in 2025 will continue into 2026, with a particular focus on ingredient safety and transparency,” said John Hewitt, the senior vice president of state affairs for the Consumer Brands Association, a trade group for food manufacturers.

This past summer, the group called on its members to from their products by the end of 2027.

“The state laws are really what’s motivating companies to get rid of dyes,” said , regulatory counsel for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit health advocacy group.

, the senior director of state health policy for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said the bipartisan support for bills targeting food dyes and ultraprocessed food struck him as unusual. Several red states have proposed legislation modeled on California’s 2023 law, which bans four food additives.

“It’s not very often you see states like California and West Virginia at the forefront of an issue together,” Baker-White said.

Although Democrats have joined Republicans in some of these efforts, Kennedy continues to drive the agenda. He appeared with Texas officials when the state enacted a package of food-related laws, including one that bars individuals who participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program 鈥� SNAP, or food stamps 鈥� from using their benefits to buy candy or sugary drinks. In December, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved similar . Eighteen states will block SNAP purchases of those items in 2026.

There are bound to be more. The Rural Health Transformation Program also offers incentives to states that implemented restrictions on SNAP.

“There are real and concrete effects where the rural health money gives points for changes in SNAP eligibility or the SNAP definitions,” Baker-White said.

In October, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that sets a and will phase them out of schools. It’s a move that may be copied in other states in 2026, while also providing fodder for legal battles. In December, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu , accusing them of selling “harmful and addictive” products. names specific brands 鈥� including cereals, pizzas, sodas, and potato chips 鈥� linking them to serious health problems.

Kennedy has also for chronic diseases. But even proponents of the efforts to tackle nutrition concerns don’t agree on which foods to target. MAHA adherents on the right haven’t focused on sugar and sodium as much as policymakers on the left. The parties have also butted heads over some Republicans’ championing of , which can spread harmful germs, and the consumption of , which contributes to .

Policymakers expect other flash points. Moves by and the that are making vaccine access more difficult have led blue states to find ways to set their own standards apart from federal recommendations, with 15 Democratic governors announcing a in October. Meanwhile, more red states may eliminate vaccine mandates for employees; . And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is pushing to .

Even as Kennedy advocates eliminating artificial dyes, the Environmental Protection Agency has on chemicals and pesticides, leading MAHA activists to calling on President Donald Trump to fire EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.

Congress has yet to act on most MAHA proposals. But state lawmakers are poised to tackle many of them.

“If we’re honest, the American people have lost faith in some of our federal institutions, whether FDA or CDC,” said Burkhammer, the West Virginia lawmaker. “We’re going to step up as states and do the right thing.”

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Julie Rovner 麻豆女优 Health News Read Julie's stories. Julie Rovner is chief Washington correspondent and host of 麻豆女优 Health News’ weekly health policy news podcast, "What the Health?" A noted expert on health policy issues, Julie is the author of the critically praised reference book "Health Care Politics and Policy A to Z," now in its third edition.

Congress returned from its holiday break to the same question it faced in December: whether to extend covid-era premium subsidies for health plans sold under the Affordable Care Act. The expanded subsidies expired at the end of 2025, leaving more than 20 million Americans facing dramatically higher out-of-pocket costs for insurance.

Meanwhile, the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-led Department of Health and Human Services announced an overhaul of the federal vaccine schedule for children, reducing the number of diseases for which vaccines are recommended from 17 to 11.

This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of 麻豆女优 Health News, Sarah Karlin-Smith of Pink Sheet, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, and Lauren Weber of The Washington Post.

Panelists

Sarah Karlin-Smith Pink Sheet

Alice Miranda Ollstein Politico

Lauren Weber The Washington Post

Among the takeaways from this week’s episode:

• The conservative movement to end abortion access nationwide has ensnared a last-ditch effort in Congress to help millions afford their health plans. As lawmakers consider a compromise to revive enhanced federal tax credits for ACA plans, some Republicans are arguing that the tax credits should be barred from subsidizing any plan that covers abortion care 鈥� even though the federal dollars would not be used to pay for abortions anyway. That change would force some states to choose between dropping their requirements for insurance coverage for abortion care or forgoing that federal assistance.
• President Donald Trump this week urged Republicans in Congress to be “flexible” about abortion restrictions. Meanwhile, his health policies so far are not yielding notable benefits for Americans, with most of the savings from his high-profile pharmaceutical deals going to the federal and state Medicaid programs. And the $50 billion federal funding boost for rural health 鈥� intended to counterbalance nearly $1 trillion in expected Medicaid spending cuts 鈥� is unlikely to make a meaningful dent, in no small part because rural facilities are barred from using the money for general expenses.
• While Kennedy announced an overhaul of federal recommendations for childhood vaccines, the action’s impact on vaccination rates and insurance coverage will depend in large part on how various states react, since states are the ones that impose mandates 鈥� such as for school enrollment 鈥� and regulate some insurers. Nonetheless, it is likely to result in a patchwork of state policies, which is problematic for public health efforts.
• Federal health officials also unveiled new nutritional guidelines, turning the decades-old food pyramid upside down. Some of the recommendations adhere to scientific findings, such as cutting added sugar from one’s diet. Others are more controversial, particularly the suggestion that Americans should eat more red meat and the softening of guidelines on saturated fats.

Plus, for “extra credit” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read (or wrote) this week that they think you should read, too:

Julie Rovner: 麻豆女优 Health News’ “,” by Fred Schulte. 

Alice Miranda Ollstein: SFGate’s “,” by Lester Black and Stephen Council.  

Sarah Karlin-Smith: ProPublica’s “” by Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy.  

Lauren Weber: The Washington Post’s “,” by Rachel Roubein, Lena H. Sun, and Lauren Weber.  

Also mentioned in this week’s podcast:

• NBC News’ “” by Berkeley Lovelace Jr.
• Stat’s “,” by Isabella Cueto and Sarah Todd.
• The Washington Post’s “,” by Lauren Weber, Caitlin Gilbert, Dylan Moriarty, and Joshua Lott.
• The Guardian’s “,” by Carter Sherman.

Credits

And subscribe to “What the Health? From 麻豆女优 Health News” on , , , , , or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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