The strategy for ending childhood chronic disease in the United States will emphasize research, public education, and voluntary action, rather than new regulatory measures, according to a draft report from the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission.
The New York Times first obtained the draft of the Strategy report, which has not been confirmed by the White House and will go through revisions before finalization. It was initially expected to be publicly released on August 12, 2025, the date of the deadline for submission to the President. But the White House delayed publication, citing the need to coordinate officials’ schedules.
The new Strategy from the Commission—chaired by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—will build on the Commission’s first publication, an Assessment released in May. The Assessment identified four main drivers of childhood chronic disease: poor diet, chemical exposure, lack of physical activity and chronic stress, and overmedicalization.
On issues such as poor diets and pesticides, the draft expands on the original report, emphasizing additional research, improved public education, and voluntary industry action. But it offers few new recommended restrictions. “This report has one overriding implied message,” Marion Nestle says of the draft. “More research needed.”
To address poor diet, one of the Assessment’s four key drivers of childhood chronic disease, the draft emphasizes research and education. It calls for studies on sleep and nutrition, the impact of food and lifestyle interventions, and how additives affect individuals.
It recommends expanding access to nutrition information, launching campaigns tied to updated dietary guidelines, and encouraging community-level interventions, such as pediatric care teams working with parents and students on healthy eating.
Both the Assessment and draft Strategy identify processed foods as a major contributor to poor diet, but the draft mentions them only once, in reference to defining the term ultra-processed foods. The New York Times notes this omission raises questions about the administration’s willingness to regulate, a step the food industry strongly opposes.
The draft endorses the prioritization of whole, healthy foods in federal programs, proposing measures like promoting full-fat dairy in schools and distributing MAHA boxes of healthy food through SNAP. But many of these programs have faced recent funding cuts, and Nestle describes a similar food box initiative under the first Trump administration as a disaster for small farmers.
If left unchanged, the draft’s language on pesticides and chemical additives will mark a win for the agriculture industry and a setback for Kennedy, MAHA supporters, and the health of the American people, according to Kari Hamerschlag, the Deputy Director of the Food and Agriculture Program at Friends of the Earth.
The Commission’s first report identified common ingredients such as glyphosate as threats to children’s health, prompting 500 people to send a letter calling for a ban on the additive. But industrial farmers and agricultural groups pushed back. Hundreds of organizations urged the Commission to rely on sound science rather than outlier studies and warned that the Assessment report contained numerous errors that fueled unfounded fears about food safety.
Since then, industry groups have lobbied heavily to shape the draft Strategy, and the National Corn Growers Association said it has spent months raising alarms about the Commission’s focus on herbicides. EPA Deputy Administrator Nancy Beck said the agency will continue to deem glyphosate safe “until the weight of scientific evidence shifts.”
But the International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified glyphosate as a “probable human carcinogen,” and Friends of the Earth has reported thousands of lawsuits linking it to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The draft, which does not specifically mention glyphosate, contains no recommendations to restructure federal oversight of pesticides. Instead, the document suggests publicizing existing EPA review processes, which the document calls “robust,” to ensure confidence.
To reduce pesticide usage, the draft suggests implementing programs to help growers adopt precision agricultural techniques and conducting research demonstrating how these technologies can help to decrease pesticide use. It also calls for new research to address cumulative exposure to chemicals, including pesticides.
The final draft of the MAHA Commission’s Strategy Report is forthcoming and, according to three people familiar with the matter, will be publicly launched by the end of August.
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Photo courtesy of The White House, Wikimedia
