President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to nominate vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the HHS caused a stir last week, with some politicians and industry groups applauding Kennedy’s anti-establishment ideas, while others worried his leadership could send the nation backward on public health.
Kennedy has espoused a number of controversial views about healthcare in recent years, including that Wi-Fi causes cancer, that the Food and Drug Administration is waging a “war on public health” and that AIDS may not be caused by HIV.
If confirmed, Kennedy will oversee an 80,000-strong department, including the FDA and CMS, which provides insurance coverage to more than 160 million people. Trump has promised to let Kennedy have free reign over healthcare policy.
Although Kennedy hasn’t laid out his agenda yet, he has expressed interest in curbing the influence of drug makers, promoting alternative medicine and cutting the number of medical experts working inside the HHS.
"What we don't really need at HHS is more medical expertise. What we need is an expertise on decoupling the agency from institutional corruption. Because it's the corruption that has distorted the science," Kennedy said during a town hall in September.
Such comments have alarmed some public health experts, including Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, who served as the White House COVID-19 response coordinator from 2022 to 2023.
“This is an extraordinarily bad choice for the health of the American people,” Jha wrote on X on Thursday. “His ideas may sound good on bumper stickers but are unserious and often downright harmful.”
Hugh Taylor, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, echoed that sentiment.
“We must leverage this sizeable platform and role to embrace established science and champion medical and scientific advancement, debunk disproven conspiracy theories, and mitigate the spread of dangerous misinformation about such topics as the safety and efficacy of vaccines,” Taylor said in a statement to Healthcare Dive. “Mr. Kennedy falls alarmingly short of these critical qualifications.”
All eyes on vaccines
Although Kennedy has said he’s not anti-vaccine, his track record suggests a deep skepticism of them. Kennedy wrote a now-retracted article linking vaccines to autism in 2005 and made controversial statements about vaccines during the pandemic.
He also promoted a book on X that claimed COVID vaccines contributed to a mass of sudden deaths and insisted that most vaccines had been inadequately tested and children did not need them.
Kennedy’s nomination is being cheered by groups that oppose vaccination requirements, including the Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, and come as polio and measles cases are rising for the first time in years — in part due to misinformation around vaccines.
Twila Brase, co-founder and president of Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom, said Kennedy’s nomination represented a “180-degree regime change in the Washington-D.C. public health establishment.”
“We expect to see more truth, fewer bureaucrats, and hopefully, in combination with the new Department of Government Efficiency, less wasteful use of taxpayer dollars for political pet projects that violate the patient, parent, and privacy rights of citizens,” Brase said in a statement to Healthcare Dive.
Other healthcare industry groups — including the American Public Health Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics — decried the nomination.
“A serious candidate for this position would follow the decades of real-world evidence that shows that vaccines are safe and prevent as many as 5 million deaths each year,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the APHA, in a statement Monday.
The head of the FDA’s vaccination program is simply asking that Kennedy “keep an open mind” about vaccines.
Even if Kennedy doesn’t end or cut longstanding federal funding for vaccination programs, “the point is around sentiment, stance, and perspective,” analysts at Jefferies wrote in a note published Thursday.
“That impacts biotech investors' view of how FDA and other HHS issues will evolve (ie not accelerating drugs and pro-biotech),” the analysts said.
The stocks of major vaccine makers dropped following Kennedy’s nomination. Moderna and Pfizer were hit the hardest, with prices still down approximately 6% and 4% respectively as of Wednesday morning.
Bracing for impact
Kennedy is likely to face scrutiny during his confirmation hearing. Already, Democrats have said they will attempt to block the nomination.
“When Mr. Kennedy comes before the Finance Committee, it’s going to be very clear what Americans stand to lose under Trump and Republicans in Congress,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement.
Democrats will not be able to block Kennedy alone because of their lack of Congressional control. However, they may be able to build a cross-aisle coalition due to the severe nature of some of Kennedy’s beliefs, according to Jerome Adams, who served as U.S. Surgeon General during the first Trump administration.
“[Republican] senators (and governors) don’t want their own agendas derailed by measles and polio outbreaks in their states,” Adams said on X.
However, other senators, including the incoming chair of the powerful Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Bill Cassidy, R-La., said they’re eager to learn more about Kennedy’s ideas.
“RFK Jr. has championed issues like healthy foods and the need for greater transparency in our public health infrastructure,” said Cassidy. “I look forward to learning more about his other policy positions and how they will support a conservative, pro-American agenda.”
Should Kennedy be appointed, analysts predict the HHS could see a change of tone toward pharma advancement — particularly for popular weight loss drugs.
Kennedy has previously suggested patients taking GLP-1s like Ozempic for weight loss should instead transition to diets of healthy food. Stock for Novo Nordisk, which makes Ozempic, fell 4% between Kennedy’s nomination and Wednesday morning.
Meanwhile, Kennedy has called for massive overhauls to the HHS, including cutting entire departments at the FDA and devoting half of the National Insitute of Health’s research budget to “preventive, alternative and holistic approaches to health.”
Despite Kennedy’s lofty goals for reform, some experts expect that at the end of the day Kennedy will have limited impact on healthcare’s day-to-day.
“I can't think of any examples of a cabinet secretary who went in and just decided to change everything, and everything changed overnight. That's sort of the antithesis of how government works,” said Hal Andrews, president and CEO of Trilliant Health, a healthcare analytics firm.
