September 9, 2025
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact
Milagros R. Elia
Program Manager, Climate and Clean Energy Advocacy
Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments
914.455.1165
Nurses Demand MAHA Report Be Supported by the Best Science Available
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the President’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission released their Make America Healthy Again Strategy as directed by President Trump’s Executive Order 14212 which established the Commission. The strategy report includes 128 recommendations and sets out “to address the childhood chronic disease crisis through advancing research, realigning incentives, increasing public awareness, and fostering private sector collaborations.” The report follows May’s Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment and comes on the heels of last week’s contentious Senate hearing with U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. where issues of narrowing vaccine recommendations were highly debated.
In response to today’s announcement, the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environment’s (ANHE) Executive Director Katie Huffling, DNP, RN, CNM, FAAN issued the following statement:
“While the report highlights important contributors to childhood health including the value of healthy infant formula, reducing children’s exposure to cumulative chemical exposures, and the importance of healthy food and physical activities, the report is unfortunately not a blueprint for protecting children. As nurses, we remain alarmed at the continuous and unscientific questioning of vaccines while at the same time defunding the science MAHA claims to need, including cutting $500 million in Health and Human Services vaccine research. Additionally, the report fails to propose safeguards from toxic chemicals and pesticides linked to children’s neurodevelopment issues and leaves the “science” out of “Gold-Standard Science” by failing to cite any longstanding, peer-reviewed science.
Today’s report promises task forces on scientific topics that have been established for years while the Administration systematically dismantles federal science, weakens protections for public health, children, and the environment and ignores the obvious: children in neighborhoods near highways, plants, and chemical sites suffer higher asthma, cancer, lead and PFAS poisoning, with poverty and racism making those harms systemically worse. The report makes no attempt to incorporate insights from frontline healthcare providers, families or community leaders who experience the consequences of environmental hazards daily. Notably, the strategy ignores lead in drinking water and PFAS in food and household products, two major toxic threats communities have long urged the government to address. As nurses, we support strong health safeguards and robust science. While this Administration and this Commission continue to highlight problems, they also continue to present unscientific solutions and promote overall deregulatory actions which restrict access to foods and medicines which will ultimately not make Americans healthy.”
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The Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments is the only national nursing organization focused solely on the intersection of health and the environment. The mission of the Alliance is to promote healthy people and healthy environments by educating and leading the nursing profession, advancing research, incorporating evidence-based practice, and influencing policy.
