MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The Trump administration has released more than 100 recommendations it says should be taken to improve children's health.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The new Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy is a follow-up to a May report that outlined what it identified as the drivers of chronic health conditions affecting children.
MARTIN: Here to tell us more is NPR health correspondent Maria Godoy. Maria, good morning.
MARIA GODOY, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So give us the overview.
GODOY: So this report serves up a smorgasbord of action items that the administration says should be implemented to increase the health of children. You know, from reinstating the Presidential Fitness Test in schools to promoting breastfeeding. Now, I'd say a hefty portion of the recommendations deal with nutrition research and education for kids. But it also calls for studying the root causes of autism and for creating what it calls a new vaccine framework.
MARTIN: Now, Secretary RFK Jr. is a well-known vaccine skeptic. Does this report call for outright changes in vaccine policy?
GODOY: It calls for making sure that America has, quote, "the best childhood vaccine schedule," and it also calls for, quote, "addressing vaccine injuries." I spoke with Dr. Peter Hotez with Baylor College of Medicine. Here's what he said.
PETER HOTEZ: Addressing vaccine injuries - that has become their euphemism for saying vaccines cause autism or neurodevelopmental disabilities. So it's more of the same RFK pseudoscience.
GODOY: In the past, Kennedy has made statements linking autism with vaccines, even though dozens of studies have thoroughly debunked that claim.
MARTIN: Maria, you mentioned earlier that nutrition is a big focus of this report. And I do have to mention that when former first lady Michelle Obama tried to call attention to diet and exercise for schoolkids, some conservatives ridiculed her for it. So what does RFK's report call for?
GODOY: Well, overall, it puts a big emphasis on physical activity and especially diet in determining the health of kids. And that's something every public health expert I spoke with said was indeed the right place to focus. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian is at Tufts University. He praised the report's broad focus on nutrition. Another action item that Mozaffarian applauded from the report was a call to close what's called the Generally Recognized as Safe loophole. It basically allows food companies to use ingredients that have not undergone a formal safety review by doing their own research to declare it safe.
DARIUSH MOZAFFARIAN: So that's a really, really big deal, again overturning, you know, 35 years of basically open-door policy for the food industry to do whatever it wants with food additives.
GODOY: But, you know, other public health advocates say that the report is overall light on specific details and does not actually crack down on ultra-processed foods, something that Kennedy has called for repeatedly. And they say that in the big picture, the administration has taken other moves that undermine nutrition. Joel Berg is the CEO of Hunger Free America. He notes that the report calls for serving fresh local produce in schools, but the administration canceled a program that did that.
MARTIN: What didn't we get in this report?
GODOY: Well, the first MAHA report identified chemical exposures as a driver of chronic illness in kids. But Dr. Philip Landrigan with Boston College said this one was basically silent on those issues.
PHILIP LANDRIGAN: We know full well that many of the chemicals to which children are exposed are already damaging health. And unfortunately, this report says nothing about controlling or reducing children's exposures to those chemicals that are known to be hazards.
GODOY: He says the report does not present a comprehensive blueprint for improving the health of America's children.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Maria Godoy. Maria, thank you.
GODOY: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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