Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made many promises on his way to becoming health secretary. He promised to make America Healthy again, and to restore trust in embattled health care facilities. And he said he won’t “take anyone’s vaccines.”
In his first year in office, he has broken many of these promises.
The radical and revolutionary changes he has made since his inauguration last February have shaken medicine and science in the US to its core. That causes damage to public health. Less than half of Americans trust the ability of health institutions to make science-based decisions, according to a new KFF study.
Kennedy’s top moves have been about goals. Back in June, he fired the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory panel on vaccines and included skeptics and misinformation peddlers. In a stunning move, he then fired CDC director Susan Monarez for refusing to fire staff and rubber stamp the recommendations of his hand-picked vaccine advisory panel. With that out of the way, the CDC continued to make shocking changes to the childhood immunization program.
But that was only the beginning of the long-term damage done by Kennedy in his first year in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. He also dramatically reshaped the agencies under the HHS umbrella. New administrations often bring in new leadership to run health care facilities, but the exodus of talent under Kennedy’s watch is rare.
A great exit
Scientific expertise from top to bench scientists has been lost in both layoffs and mass attrition. The Science analysis found that about 2,400 Ph.D.s have come out of the three affiliated institutions in the past year, two to three times more than in 2024. And at the National Institutes of Health, the crown jewel of federal research, more than half of its 27 centers currently have no directors.
The damage has extended to a large academic research program supported by the agency. After a year of brutal grant cancellations and subsequent court returns, researchers funded by the NIH and the National Science Foundation have lost an estimated $1.4 billion, according to a recent Nature review. Meanwhile, new grant awards from the NIH to academic labs are down 24 percent by 2025, an effect that could slow medical discovery in the US.
The FDA, so important to big pharma and consumers alike for its strong, reliable regulation, has instead been marked by chaos. Last year, five different people served as director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, the agency’s arm that oversees new drugs. Another departure came amid scrutiny of a new voucher program introduced by FDA director Marty Makary — an initiative that appeared to be motivated more by political maneuvering than improving patients’ lives. Meanwhile, the head of the vaccine division, Vinay Prasad, has made a series of policy changes that could limit access to certain vaccines, while also cooling investment in the sector.
Then there is the CDC. Beyond the vaccine debacle, some of the agency’s core tasks seem strange. Last month, an analysis in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that much of the information traditionally published by the organization was out of date or not. Meanwhile, the CDC has issued fewer health warnings in the past year, compared to many it would issue in a typical year. Radio silence has left local health departments in the dark about threats lurking in their communities.
Now, the CDC has no leader. HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill, who was named interim director after Monarez was fired, was among several to be fired last week. Given the chaos of the past year, it’s hard to believe that anyone with scientific credibility could run for the job — or that anyone Kennedy picked could pass the Senate.
An attack on professionals
The changes at the CDC are beginning to feel irreversible. That’s in no small part because Kennedy and other health officials have spent a year discussing already shaky public confidence in the CDC’s expertise — and in the technology itself. Over the past year, Kennedy has repeatedly undermined the public’s trust in the scientists and doctors who work for him. Nothing sums that up more than his refusal to encourage the public, and especially parents, to “do your own research.”
At the same time, other agencies are being dropped to fill the gaps left by this stagnant CDC. Countries and medical organizations are creating their own public health teams that are meant to coordinate during outbreaks; resource sharing; and send clear, evidence-based information and advice.
Those were initially seen as temporary alliances, intended to be patched up during periods of disruption. Yet as time goes on, it is clear that they must evolve into stronger, more sustainable alternatives – and perhaps one day evolve into federally funded organizations that can support the needs and priorities of various regions.
The question is what’s next for Kennedy. He is definitely not done with vaccines. Next in his sights is the rebuilding of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a fund that pays people who suffer from rare adverse effects of shots. When he removed part of the compensation panel last month, it set off alarm bells: If he said members were open to expanding the list of covered injuries to include ones that aren’t backed by science — autism, for example — he could quickly devastate the coffers and eventually get other companies to stop making guns.
Some may be encouraged by reports that Kennedy plans this election year to shift his focus to one of the hottest topics in politics: healthy eating. Yet his actions so far leave little faith that he is interested in making evidence-based reforms. His overhaul of the food pyramid has received mixed reviews for its overemphasis on red meat and saturated fat, for reversing previously conservative recommendations about alcohol consumption, and for the conflicts of interest of some of the consultants who helped develop it.
Even if Kennedy were able to make great strides in improving Americans’ access to “real” food – and I sincerely hope he does – it wouldn’t outweigh the damage he did in one year. His legacy will ultimately be measured by the senseless suffering his policies have caused. The magnitude of that pain will unfortunately increase the longer he is in office.
Lisa Jarvis is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. ©2026 Bloomberg. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
