On February 13, President Donald Trump published an executive order (EO), Establishing the President’s Make America Healthy (MAHA) Again Commission. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F, Kennedy chairs the Commission, which has 14 members, including Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Among other tasks, Trump charged the Commission with:
- studying the scope of the childhood chronic disease crisis and any potential contributing causes;
- advising and assisting the President on informing the American people about the crisis, using transparent and clear facts; and
- providing government-wide recommendations on policy and strategy related to addressing the identified contributing causes of and ending the crisis.
Additionally, the EO required the commission to submit an assessment of the childhood chronic disease crisis, which was finally released on May 22. The MAHA Commission’s Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment claims to establish the facts needed to develop effective strategies to combat the crisis. More specifically, the report provides a review of three key elements of the crisis: (1) its scope, (2) the conditions that created it, and (3) the mechanisms through which it grows.
According to the commission, the scope of the crisis is exemplified by rising rates of obesity, diabetes, neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), allergies, autoimmune disorders, and mental health disorders in Americans under the age of 20. Furthermore, the report identifies four potential drivers of the childhood chronic disease crisis, areas in which FABBS members have long conducted important research:
- Poor diet, including too many ultraprocessed foods and too few fruits and vegetables.
- Aggregation of environmental chemicals in food, water, and the air.
- Lack of physical activity and chronic stress, as the overuse of technology has increased stress and led to more sedentary lifestyles.
- Overmedicalization, especially of SSRIs, stimulants, potentially, vaccines. The report suggests that poor regulation, in which corporate profitability outweighs children’s health, may be responsible for overmedicalization.
Having submitted this assessment, the Commission must now prepare a strategy to improve the health of American children, due to Trump in August.
The assessment claims to harness “gold-standard science,” but since its release, several reports have emerged indicating that it is rife with errors, thus calling its conclusions into question. The document includes more than 500 citations, but some of these sources do not appear to exist: the citations may include scientists who conduct relevant research but point to articles that have not actually been written. In many cases, searching for the article title only leads back to the MAHA report.
Even for citations to real articles, errors abound, with articles attributed to the wrong authors, journal, or year of publication. Moreover, the assessment misrepresented the findings of several real studies according to the authors themselves. For example, the Commission claims that psychotherapy alone is more effective than medication for treating children’s mental health issues; however, the review cited to support this claim did not include a comparison between the effectiveness of psychotherapy and antidepressants.
The report has been updated multiple times in the wake of the criticism, with at least 18 of the original citations being edited or removed entirely. But the misrepresentation problem remains. Regarding the claim above – that psychotherapy alone is more effective than medication for treating children’s mental health issues – the report now cites a study by psychologist Pim Cuijpers, but this study concerns psychiatric medications only in adults, meaning its conclusions cannot apply to non-adult populations.
The White House has repeatedly dismissed the criticisms, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attributing the errors to “formatting issues.” However, experts have suggested that the errors may have been generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The presence of “oaicite” in several citation URLs is notable, given that it is a marker of OpenAI content. Additionally, AI is known to “hallucinate” studies that seem real but are not.
Erroneous and mispresented citations are not the only problem with the assessment. The document highlights the hypocrisy of the Trump Administration’s actions regarding the nation’s scientific agencies and infrastructure. The assessment cites many agencies and offices that the administration has hamstrung during the first half of 2025. It also sets priorities that have already been undermined by the administration’s spending and staffing decisions. For example, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is the HHS agency dedicated to improving the lives of individuals living with mental and substance use disorders. The MAHA assessment highlights the youth mental health crisis as a pressing challenge, but the administration is seeking to drastically cut SAMHSA’s budget. “Aggregation of environmental chemicals” is one of the four identified drivers of the childhood chronic disease epidemic, but Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has looked to gut pollution rules. These are just a few of the ways in which the Trump Administration has already undermined the MAHA Commission.
FABBS has been closely following the MAHA movement and its impact on federal science agencies, including NIH. Because of the role that Congress plays in the appropriations process, we are asking constituents to reach out to the founding members of the MAHA caucus – including Senator Roger Marshall, MD (R-KS) – to request better or any oversight of HHS to ensure that our shared goal – improving the health of all Americans – is not compromised before it can truly begin. We ask that any residents of Kansas consider adding their name to this sign-on letter to Senator Marshall. Additional letters to other founding members of the caucus are forthcoming.
If you are interested in joining the FABBS database of researchers eager to engage with Congress, please submit the form here.
