Health: Critics Call for a Broader MAHA Plan for Children’s Health

A Time magazine essay argues that Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) has produced a strategy for children’s health focused on diet, chemical exposure, a lack of physical activity, and chronic stress, but critics say the plan largely ignores the social, economic, and psychological determinants that shape young people’s wellbeing. The piece contends that the MAHA roadmap neglects the most powerful drivers of health outcomes for children, including poverty, violence, and the everyday conditions that influence how kids cope with stress and adversity. It also laments the absence of input from outside experts — particularly mental-health professionals, teachers, parents, and the children the plan is meant to serve — and argues that this gap narrows the scope of actionable remediation.

The author notes that depression, anxiety, PTSD, autism, eating disorders, asthma, and prediabetes have all risen among youth, and asserts that these conditions are either caused or exacerbated by children’s mental and emotional states and by the environments in which they live. While MAHA highlights chronic stress, the piece argues that the most important stressors go unrecognized. Poverty, for instance, correlates with poorer health across multiple domains: reduced access to high-quality education and healthy foods, higher incidence of asthma, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular and immune disorders, and substantially greater risk of mental-health challenges. Violence, especially within the family and as measured by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), is described as a potent predictor of long-term psychological and behavioral problems. The op-ed underscores gun violence as the No. 1 cause of death in children, a factor not addressed in MAHA’s guiding documents. The critique frames these omissions as a narrowing of policy tools that could otherwise support durable improvements in child health if economic, social, and experiential contexts were integrated into the plan.

Beyond context, the piece argues that MAHA has not sought the lived experiences and preferences of young people themselves. It calls for incorporating the perspectives of children and adolescents as real-world experts who can identify which environmental factors and stressors trouble them most and which solutions they would welcome. The author suggests convening public hearings across the country to gather input from people of all ages with differing viewpoints to inform decision-making and raise national awareness about the issues at stake. The analogy is drawn to a prior experience chairing the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy, where thousands of scientists and citizens testified and helped shape recommendations that were translated into programs across the Department of Defense, the Veterans Affairs system, NIH, and major medical centers. The author argues that similar testimony could help MAHA develop more comprehensive and evidence-based recommendations grounded in experience rather than theory.

To broaden MAHA’s reach, the author urges engaging outside experts to document and promote successful programs already aiding children in school wellness, family health, and community settings. Such programs would emphasize nutrition and the reduction of ultra-processed and chemically adulterated foods, greater transparency around additives and labels, and hands-on experiences in preparing and sharing healthy meals. The essay notes that comprehensive approaches should accompany an examination of the economic forces that shape food production and marketing. Importantly, it calls for expanding nonpharmacological options for mental health, arguing for increased government funding to investigate therapies such as mindfulness, stress-management techniques, regular physical activity, and counseling. These approaches have been associated with improvements in mental health and brain function comparable to some pharmacological interventions, but without the same side effects and with gains in self-efficacy. Yet the piece points out that funding for this work has not materialized and urges a shift in public investment and incentives to reduce overreliance on medicalization and prescription practices for children’s mental health concerns.

Public-school professionals and clinicians with hands-on experience should be solicited to provide input on MAHA’s strategy, the author adds. They would likely advocate ensuring that kids have a safe, consequence-free space to share their challenges and fears about parental and peer relationships in a world that feels increasingly unpredictable and dangerous. Wellness-oriented groups — sometimes called “wellness,” “support,” or “mind-body” initiatives — can be central to helping families, schools, and communities contend with mass shootings, climate-related disasters, pervasive violence, and poverty. The essay argues that gathering testimony from educators, counselors, and families could help justify broader adoption of these approaches and push back against reimbursement models that reward brief medication checks over longer counseling sessions. In the author’s view, reforming these incentives would reduce overmedicalization and the risk of unnecessary pharmacological interventions.

To translate these ideas into practice, the piece calls for extensive training of adults who interact with children. This includes teachers incorporating brief mindfulness practices into classrooms, helping students choose engaging forms of physical activity, or participating with them in nutrition education. Parents would receive similar training. The proposal underscores a need to reframe the way professionals are trained and compensated so mental-health care becomes integrated into routine care for children in schools, clinics, private practices, and hospitals. It also suggests broadening the dialogue around the President’s Fitness Test, criticizing it as a one-size-fits-all approach created in a different era. The author acknowledges Kennedy’s belief in increasing physical activity for children but argues for a more nuanced, individualized set of options that offers children joy, confidence, and intrinsic motivation to stay active — possibilities like dancing, martial arts, hiking, and other activities that suit diverse interests and abilities.

The piece envisions MAHA as a more collaborative enterprise that engages children as partners in shaping health policy rather than passive recipients of adult decisions. It suggests renaming the movement to reflect a partnership model, such as “Partnering With Our Children to Create a Healthy Future,” to emphasize shared responsibility and empowerment rather than paternalism. If MAHA were to systematically widen its lens and incorporate public input, external expertise, and nonpharmacological strategies, the author argues that the movement could strengthen its aims while gaining broader public support. This broader approach would also align with broader goals advocated by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is identified as a leading proponent of MAHA, and could bolster bipartisan momentum for policies that improve the social determinants of health for children: a robust, healthy-food system; a clean environment; structured time for physical activity in schools; and access to comprehensive healthcare. The essay closes by pointing to the potential for MAHA to become a truly collaborative, evidence-informed force for child health that addresses both immediate needs and systemic drivers of ill health, including poverty, violence, and inadequate mental-health resources. It treats the plan not as a finished product but as a living framework that can evolve through inclusive, data-driven engagement with communities across the United States.