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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
RFK Jr. says public health agencies are on the decline. Here are 5 ways
they’ve improved your health
By Jeffrey Kopp, CNN
Updated:
12:25 PM EDT, Tue September 16, 2025
Source: CNN
US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. disparaged
the department he’s been tasked with running in his appearances on
Fox News this week, describing HHS as “on a 30- or 40-year decline”
and calling the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “a
broken agency.”
“When you look back, what would you say is the last great success
that our government public health agencies have had?” “Fox and
Friends Weekend” co-host Charles Hurt asked on Sunday.
“Well, I don’t think there have been successes,” Kennedy
responded.
But career public health professionals and historians say he’s wrong.
“These are advances that take a lot of time to research and prove,
and often help people who are already healthy,” Dr. Barron Lerner, a
physician and historian of medicine at New York University, told CNN.
“The accomplishments we can talk about are often on a population
basis. They are proven over years and sometimes decades.”
Here are a few of the biggest ways public health agencies have improved
people’s health.
Dramatic cuts to smoking rates
For decades, HHS — through the surgeon general, the CDC and other
offices — has led campaigns to cut smoking rates. It began with the
landmark 1964 linking cigarettes to lung cancer and culminated in 2009,
when the US Food and Drug Administration was granted authority to
regulate tobacco products directly.
Over that time span, smoking among US adults fell from about 42% in
1965 to just 12% today, according to an by the American Lung
Association.
Medicare drug coverage for seniors
In 2003, Congress created Medicare Part D to cover outpatient
prescription drugs, which had previously been excluded from Medicare
benefits. When the program launched in 2006, the Centers for Medicare &
Medicaid Services — part of HHS — made the program work by
partnering with private insurers, setting the rules for what drugs
would be covered and how much people would pay, and running a national
campaign to help seniors sign up.
Today, tens of millions of Medicare beneficiaries rely on Part D to
afford their medications.
Breakthroughs in HIV/AIDS research
In 1996, a study funded by the National Institutes of Health discovered
the breakthrough drug combination that transformed HIV from a death
sentence into a manageable chronic condition. It found that a
combination of three drugs , and just a year later, AIDS-related deaths
dropped 48%, .
Those achievements have been amplified globally by PEPFAR – the
President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, launched in 2003 by
President George W. Bush – which has invested over $100 billion in
the global HIV/AIDS response and helped save over 25 million lives,
according to HIV.gov.
Covid-19 and Operation Warp Speed
One of the most recent improvements to public health came through the
rapid development and rollout of Covid-19 vaccines under Operation Warp
Speed, a signature achievement of the first Trump administration.
The NIH helped design and test the vaccines, the FDA reviewed and
authorized them, and the CDC coordinated distribution and public
guidance.
Vaccines typically take five to 10 years to develop, according to Johns
Hopkins University, and sometimes longer. But Operation Warp Speed
delivered shots within a year of the pandemic’s onset and is credited
with saving millions of American lives, according to .
Bridging the gap for childhood vaccinations
In the early 1990s, just 60% of children under 3 in the US had
received the full set of recommended vaccines. To close that gap, in
1994 the CDC launched the Vaccines for Children program, which provides
vaccines at no cost to pediatricians and clinics serving families who
couldn’t otherwise afford them. By the end of the decade, vaccination
rates climbed to nearly 90%, and the CDC estimates that the program
has prevented in children born since then.
Vaccine safety has become a central criticism of Kennedy, who in June
fired all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization
Practices, the group of independent experts who make recommendations on
childhood and adult vaccinations. The committee now has seven new
members and is expected to get more soon.
“Anybody who has the privilege of serving in a leadership position in
HHS is usually awed by the many achievements the agency has led,” Dr.
Howard Koh, a professor of public health leadership at the Harvard T.H.
Chan School of Public Health who served as HHS assistant secretary
under President Obama, told CNN. “He is setting back public health
progress by a generation, at the very least, and that has got to stop.
We are losing ground so rapidly, and it’s a tremendous concern for
everybody in the public health community.”
An HHS spokesperson told CNN in a statement: “Secretary Kennedy has
been clear: the CDC has been broken for a long time. Restoring it as
the world’s most trusted guardian of public health will take
sustained reform. … HHS remains committed to supporting the health of
the American people while respecting their right to clear, honest
information and personal choice.”
Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Dr. Howard
Koh’s last name.
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