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How Can Rfk Jr ‘make America Healthy Again’? He Is Ignoring The Two Biggest Killers Of American Children | Devi Sridhar

The US health secretary’s latest report is more interested in vaccine scepticism than the brutal toll inflicted by guns and road traffic accidents

“Make America healthy again”. We can all get behind this slogan and agree that much more could be done to improve the health of people living in the US. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health and human services secretary, recently released a report detailing the challenge of the US’s health. About 90% of it outlines the high rates of obesity, mental health issues and chronic disease, 10% covers vaccine scepticism, and 0% looks at solutions or any discussions of the systemic social and economic issues that drive much of the US’s health problems.

But what surprised me more was a notable omission of the two biggest killers of American children. American children aren’t just unhealthier. They’re more likely to die in the first 19 years of life because of guns – both homicides and suicides – or in a road traffic accident than children in comparable countries. How can an entire report be written without mentioning these factors, and how unique the US is in the burden of disability and death they cause?

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of How Not to Die (Too Soon)

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How Can Rfk Jr ‘make America Healthy Again’? He Is Ignoring The Two Biggest Killers Of American Children | Devi Sridhar

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