So You Want to Make America Healthy? Here’s What Not To Do

Make America Healthy Again - a play on Donald Trump’s signature catchphrase, Make America Great Again - has emerged as a defining slogan of the current administration. With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the spokesperson, the platform claims that America is sick not because of structural deprivation, but because of institutional corruption and personal choices. Featured in the MAHA Report is a strong narrative that America’s health problems stem from bad personal habits and a captured medical system, and that national health will be restored primarily through individual lifestyle optimization rather than through investment in public systems, public goods, or shared infrastructure.

While greatness - as is referenced in the MAGA slogan - is highly subjective, health as a principle comes with concrete, measurable requirements: food, water, disease prevention, medical care, and the ability to access treatment when diseases arise. Thus, in the present article, we assess to what extent the present administration is actually making America healthy by examining whether their actions expand or dismantle those core foundations.

#1 - Deplete Food Security

Access to food is a necessary requirement of livelihood, and food security directly predicts health. National data shows that food insecurity is significantly associated with heightened rates of hospitalization, poorer physical health, and worse developmental outcomes in children. In the United States, about 17 million households were food insecure in 2023. Importantly, households with children are more vulnerable - in 2023, 17.9% of U.S. households with children were food insecure, compared to 13.5% of all U.S. households. Another study has found that most households (75%) which face food insecurity have family members with role-related risk factors such as age, disability, and/or job loss.

As Franklin D. Roosevelt once put it, “the test of our progress is…whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” If a nation truly seeks to increase the health of its people, it must ensure that those who may be unable to participate in the workforce in order to produce the funds necessary to purchase food - such as children, the elderly, or the disabled - still have access to food. This is the baseline logic of food aid; food is not a luxury good, but a requirement for life, and thus, health. 

Yet, in the U.S., the present federal leadership is actively working against food security. This budget season, critical food programs for infants, women, and low-income families  fell onto the chopping block. Senate Republicans blocked efforts to fund the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) during the government shutdown. Although two federal judges have recently ruled that the SNAP benefits cannot be legally suspended due to the government shutdown, the Trump administration declared it will only provide partial support, and hinted that benefits for new applications may be canceled. Further, additional SNAP/WIC cuts have been proposed for FY2026 draft budgets. 

These are effectively decisions that certain children, elderly, and disabled members of our society no longer get to eat.

#2 - Poison Clean Drinking Water

Clean drinking water is another facet of health which is not optional, but a necessity for livelihood. Moreover, the degree of cleanliness of water is a major factor in risk of disease. For example, in the U.S., exposure to industrial toxins in drinking water is already widespread. The CDC’s national biomonitoring program has found that PFAS are detected in the blood of nearly every American tested, and past research has linked PFAS exposure to increased risk of a myriad of diseases - including (but not limited to) risk of cancer and widespread immune impairment. A truly healthy nation should reduce or eliminate exposure to toxins in drinking water, like PFAS.

Despite this, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it would both delay enforcement of drinking water limits for PFAS until 2031, and rescind and reconsider the limits on four PFAS chemicals entirely. PFAS are considered “highly persistent” in the human body - and their biological half-lives are measured in years, underscoring just how long they stick around to disrupt us. Delaying enforcement until 2031 materially ensures additional years of exposure are baked into the bloodstream of the American people. As Erik Olson of the Natural Resources Defence Council put it, these decisions amount to a “huge gift to polluters” - one that will leave “Americans across the country…exposed to toxic PFAS chemicals for many more years.” 

#3 - Reduce Access to Medical Care

Access to medical care is but another central determinant of whether a population is healthy. Robust medical systems can serve as the defining difference between manageable illness, and irreversible health decline. Research has continuously found that degree of insurance coverage is associated with earlier detection, lower mortality, and better management of chronic disease. Individuals who are uninsured, on the other hand, often postpone or forgo critical medical care. When they finally seek treatment, their illnesses will be further advanced and more expensive to treat. A society that wishes health for its people must thus ensure that its people can not only access medical care, but can do so in a way which does not result in financial ruin. 

Unfortunately the U.S. governed under Trump is actively pushing its people in the opposite direction. Take the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) - signed into law July 4th, 2025 - as an example. The OBBB will likely trigger hundreds of billions in automatic Medicare cuts, per the Congressional Budget Office. Additionally, the law limits Medicare coverage for certain groups, and estimates project tens of billions in Medicaid reductions. Healthcare access advocacy groups are warning that millions of Americans will likely lose healthcare coverage as a result of the OBB. 

When a government knowingly increases the odds that people will be uninsured when illness strikes, it is thus operating in favor of illness over health.

#4 - Attack Disease Prevention

Despite political narratives to the contrary, life-saving vaccinations should not be an issue of political preference. It is a fundamental feature of adequate public-health infrastructure - vaccines suppress outbreaks before they begin and protect the young and immunocompromised who cannot mount full immune responses. Centuries of epidemiological evidence shows that societies without robust vaccine systems have dramatically lower mortality from infectious disease and dramatically lower burden on hospitals and emergency care.

Under RFK Jr.’s influence, the U.S. is setting fire to our once robust vaccine infrastructure. For instance, earlier this year RFK Jr. fired every member of the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) vaccine advisory committee, ACIP. He then replaced the committee with hand-selected cronies, who Harvard public health faculty members noted mostly have “no evident expertise” in vaccines or infectious diseases. RFK Jr. has additionally axed $500 million mRNA vaccine development - terminating twenty-two potentially life-saving vaccine contracts. He has also ended COVID vaccination recommendations for healthy children and pregnant people. This decision has prompted notable public-health groups to sue, arguing these changes were arbitrary and harmful. Moreover, he has consistently promoted false narratives surrounding vaccines - including lying about the total number of child vaccinations and lying that vaccines aren’t tested for safety, and demanding unnecessary placebo-controlled trials for already-established vaccines, alarming health experts.

#5 - Cut Research and Cures

Scientific research is the often unseen hero of past medical advancements and the engine that generates future cures and treatments. Every modern lifesaving treatment naturally began as a research question - many of which were studied and tested at our own federal research institutions. NIH-funded researchers, for example, recently developed new gene-delivery systems capable of reaching specific neural cell types in the brain and spinal cord, a breakthrough which carries potential for targeted treatments for disorders like ALS, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.  When a country invests in biomedical research, it invests in the health of its people. 

The Trump administration, however, has taken great strides to try to actively dismantle that engine. First, Trump’s FY2026 budget proposal suggested cutting funding to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from roughly $48 billion to $27.5 billion - a roughly 40% reduction in funding. Additionally, according to a recent analysis by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), U.S. institutions have received nearly $5 billion less in NIH extramural grant funding in the 2025 fiscal year in comparison to the 2024 fiscal year. At the National Cancer Institute - one of NIH’s major branches - only about 4% of grant applications are expected to be funded, down from roughly 9% just a year earlier. 

#6 - Do Nothing About Gun Violence

Protection from gun violence holds a unique place in the health of the American people. First, the risk of gun violence is exponentially higher in the U.S. relative to peer nations, and according to the Commonwealth Fund, the U.S. has the highest overall rate of death from firearms compared to 13 other high-income countries - nearly five times that of France, the nation with the second-highest rate. Devastatingly, firearms are now the leading cause of death for American children and teens - surpassing car crashes. Public-health researchers have also repeatedly shown that higher household exposure to firearms predicts higher rates of homocide and suicide, and that more permissive gun laws are tied to excess, preventable child deaths. 

Other high-income nations solved this decades ago - we simply chose not to. The Trump administration has instead championed deregulation efforts that increase gun availability. One example of this in action is the administration’s decision to end the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’ (ATF) “zero-tolerance” enforcement policy against dangerous gun dealers. In other high-income nations, policymakers have confronted rising rates of firearm death in children with regulation - and the death rates dropped. In Australia, for example, national gun law reforms after the Port Arthur massacre were followed by a significant and sustained decline in firearm deaths. Yet here we are, explicitly choosing death and violence to not only our people at large, but specifically, to those most vulnerable - our children. 

The Bottom Line

While “Make America Healthy Again” may make for a fun slogan, the reality of the surrounding policy is deeply detrimental to the wellbeing of the American people. The Trump administration has weakened the nation’s food security, helped further poison our drinking water, depleted access to medical care, attacked our disease-prevention systems, depleted biomedical research pipelines, and is actively feeding into the gun violence which robs our children of their future. You cannot supplement your way out of these foundational principles. You cannot detox yourself out of a violent political regime that is structurally manufacturing death and disease. 

At Stand Up for Science, we’re fighting to save public health and science - and unlike MAHA, we actually want to feed America. Find ways to join our fight below!