As a result, the commission, headed by US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recommended ten research initiatives for various government agencies that aim to tackle the nation's health crisis and improve the health of all Americans.
The first section of the report delved into ultra-processed foods, which found that "an umbrella review of 45 meta-analyses published in the BMJ analyzing data from nearly 10 million participants, found that high consumption of ultra-processed foods is linked to 32 adverse health outcomes." This includes cancer, diabetes, mental health disorders, type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and all-cause mortality.
"Nearly 70% of children's calories now come from UPFs, contributing to obesity, diabetes, and other chronic conditions," the report said.
The next section examined chemicals in the environment, which have been linked to childhood "developmental issues" and chronic disease, according to the report. Next, the researchers explored the "lack of physical activity and chronic stress" in children, finding that children's physical activity levels have been on a sharp decline due to the digital age, resulting in "unprecedented levels of inactivity" that have caused sleep deprivation and chronic disease.
Furthermore, the report documented the overmedicalization of children. "American healthcare operates in a marketplace where incentives, when misaligned, can foster and encourage overuse by allowing stakeholders to maximize profits at the expense of consumer health and wellbeing. The report noted, "In recent decades, American children have, as a product of these misaligned incentives, been subject to an unprecedented period of over-prescription driven, in large part, by corporate influence, with demonstrable consequences for their health."
The commission recommended the following ten initiatives to be enacted in various government agencies, as reported by Breitbart News:
- Addressing the replication crisis: NIH should launch a coordinated initiative to confront the replication crisis, investing in reproducibility efforts to improve trust and reliability in basic science and interventions for childhood chronic disease.
- Post-marketing surveillance: NIH and FDA should build systems for real-world safety monitoring of pediatric drugs and create programs to independently replicate findings from industry-funded studies.
- Real-world data platform: Expand the NIH-CMS autism data initiative into a broader, secure system linking claims, EHRs, and environmental inputs to study childhood chronic diseases.
- AI-powered surveillance: Create a task force to apply AI and machine learning to federal health and nutrition datasets for early detection of harmful exposures and childhood chronic disease trends.
- GRAS oversight reform: Fund independent studies evaluating the health impact of self-affirmed GRAS food ingredients, prioritizing risks to children, and informing transparent FDA rulemaking.
- Nutrition trials: NIH should fund long-term trials comparing whole-food, reduced-card, and low-UPF diets in children to assess effects on obesity and insulin resistance.
- Large-scale lifestyle interventions: launch a coordinated national lifestyle-medicine initiative that embeds real-world randomized trials - covering integrated interventions in movement, diet, light exposure, and sleep timing - within existing cohorts and EHR networks.
- Drug safety research: Support studies on long-term neurodevelopmental and metabolic outcomes of commonly prescribed pediatric drugs, emphasizing real-world settings and meaningful endpoints.
- Alternative testing methods: Invest in New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), such as organ-on-a-chip, microphysiological systems, and computational biology, to complement animal testing with more predictive human-relevant models.
- Precision toxicology: Launch a national initiative to map gene-environment interactions affecting childhood disease risk, especially for pollutants, endocrine disruptors, and pharmaceuticals.
"It was 98 days ago today, on February 13, that President Trump...convened the MAHA Commission, and directed us to produce a report within 100 days," Kennedy said during a press call with the Cabinet ahead of the report's release. "Over the next 100 days, we are going to do a follow-up report on policy recommendations."
While he wants to prioritize all policy recommendations, saying they are "all important," Kennedy particularly mentioned the importance of focusing on ultra-processed food.
"I think everybody wants to prioritize the ultra-processed food crisis and try to reduce our reliance on ultra-processed food and try to improve the quality of the food, improve the nutrient density of our food," he said.
