Drugs

MAHA Assessment Details ‘Children’s Health Crisis’

David McFarland

— 2 min read
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“The health of American children is in crisis.” That’s the premise of a report, “Make Our Children Healthy Again: Assessment” issued by the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission. The report says it “presents the stark reality of American children’s declining health, backed by compelling data and long-term trends. More importantly, it seeks to unpack the potential dietary, behavioral, medical, and environmental drivers behind this crisis. By examining the root causes of deteriorating child health, this assessment establishes a clear, evidence-based foundation for the policy interventions, institutional reforms, and societal shifts needed to reverse course.”

The assessment identifies these potential drivers behind the rise in childhood chronic disease: poor diet that leans on ultra-processed foods, aggregation of environmental chemicals, lack of physical activity and chronic stress, and overmedicalization.

The report says its purpose is a radical transparency about the nation’s current state to spur a conversation about how we can build a world, together, where:

  • American farmers are put at the center of how we think about health;
  • the American healthcare system thrives when disease is prevented and reversed, not just “managed” in a sick-care system;
  • the Great American Comeback of energy dominance powers AI technology that will develop new tools and push the frontiers of science to help the nation better understand how to measure and reverse chronic disease; and
  • the next 10 years see a revolution in living standards and prosperity, while the nation understands how to better manage the increased threats to children’s health that come from industrialization.

The report presents these 10 next steps “supporting gold-standard scientific research and developing a comprehensive strategy”:

  • addressing the replication crisis through National Institutes of Health (NIH) investment in reproducibility efforts to improve trust and reliability in basic science and interventions for childhood chronic disease;
  • real-world post-marketing surveillance by FDA and NIH of pediatric drugs and creation of programs to independently replicate findings from industry-funded studies;
  • real-world data platform;
  • AI-powered surveillance of federal health and nutrition datasets for early detection of harmful exposures and childhood chronic disease trends;
  • GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) oversight reform through independent studies evaluating the health impact of self-affirmed GRAS food ingredients;
  • nutrition trials comparing whole-food, reduced-carb, and low-ultra-processed food diets in children to assess effects on obesity and insulin resistance;
  • large-scale lifestyle interventions;
  • drug safety research;
  • alternative testing models such as organ-on-a-chip, microphysiological systems, and computational biology to complement animal testing; and
  • a national initiative to map gene-environment interactions affecting childhood disease risk, especially for pollutants, endocrine disruptors, and drugs.

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