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Robert F. Kennedy’s first month as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has come to a close, and it offers a glimpse into what the next four years spell when it comes to vaccine policy, drug regulation and food guidance.

As the various departments under HHS — including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — have reeled from funding and staffing cuts, Kennedy has marched forward on his “Make America Healthy Again” or MAHA initiatives.

Here’s an overview of Kennedy’s first month, what it means for public health and how vaccine-makers could have their industry upended.

Measles misinformation

Since stepping into the helm at HHS, Kennedy has already begun making moves on vaccine policy that have both rallied MAHA supporters and concerned public health experts.

Kennedy’s break from standard vaccine guidance comes as a measles outbreak in rural Texas and New Mexico has accelerated. The outbreak has now reached some 300 reported cases — mostly among children — and two deaths. That’s a much higher number than the total number of U.S. measles cases in 2024.

The U.S. had entirely eliminated measles in 2000 due to widespread vaccination, but the disease has since reappeared as childhood MMR vaccinations have dropped, declining from 95% to 93% during the pandemic, according to the CDC.

While the CDC released a health advisory earlier this month about the outbreak encouraging people to make sure they’re up to date on the MMR vaccine, Kennedy’s actions have indicated a clash with typical vaccine guidelines.

In a highly-publicized interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Kennedy pushed misinformation about the measles vaccine, arguing that it leads to adverse events.

“It does cause deaths every year,” Kennedy said. “It causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes.”

He has instead called for the use of alternative treatments for measles, including budesonide, Vitamin A and cod liver oil, which don’t have any scientific evidence that they’re effective against the disease.

His stance on the measles vaccine could lead more people to question its efficacy, public health experts said.

“He’s basically setting up this binary option for many people,” noted Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “Where they think, ‘Why get a vaccine? Why inject myself with a live weakened series of viruses when I can just take a vitamin?’ That certainly sounds a lot safer and a lot less risky — so that’s what people are doing.”

Muddying the water on vaccines, from mRNA to bird flu

Kennedy’s stance on vaccines was a main area of scrutiny during his confirmation hearing, with Sen. Billy Cassidy — a Republican physician — leading the charge in questioning the nominee over his past anti-vaccine advocacy efforts.

During that hearing, Kennedy claimed he would do nothing as HHS Secretary to make vaccines less available, emphasizing that all of his children were vaccinated. But if his first month is any indication, he is already parting with those claims and taking a much more skeptical and inconsistent approach to vaccine policy.

“He has launched a full-out war against vaccines, because that’s just what you would expect,” Offit said. “It’s what he’s been doing for the last 20 years. The difference now is instead of the anti-vaccine movement just sort of screaming from the sidelines, they’re making it policy.”

Under Kennedy’s reign, the HHS has so far made a slew of cancellations and changes to vaccine meetings, contracts and policies.

Among them, the FDA cancelled its routine vaccine advisory committee meeting. That meeting, held every March, identifies flu strains to be included in the next flu season’s vaccines. The CDC also postponed a vaccine advisory committee that examines the cost and benefits of newly approved vaccines.

Perhaps most alarmingly, the CDC plans to further research the long-debunked link between vaccines and autism, something Kennedy has crusaded for his entire career. Scientific studies have repeatedly found no correlation between vaccines and autism.

“As President Trump said in his joint address to Congress, the rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed,” HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a statement. “CDC will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening.”

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), meanwhile, recently cancelled some 40 grants that funded vaccine hesitancy research amid its greater funding cuts.

On the bird flu front, the HHS announced it would be re-evaluating its $600 million Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) contract with Moderna to explore vaccines for five different flu subtypes, according to Bloomberg. One of the strains being explored is H5N1, the current bird flu strain. In the same Sean Hannity interview, Kennedy claimed vaccinating birds could turn them into “mutation factories.”

Experts fear that mRNA vaccine research could be targeted next. KFF Health News reported that NIH officials directed employees to remove information about mRNA vaccines from grant applications, leaving scientists with a sense of uncertainty around the future of government-funded mRNA research.

mRNA vaccine technology is used in the current COVID-19 vaccines, but it’s also being explored for use in cancer, hepatitis C, cardiovascular issues and other therapeutic areas. The NIH news prompted former FDA commissioner Robert Califf to publicly post on his LinkedIn, noting that he hoped it was a “false alarm.”

“Use of mRNA, siRNA and genome editing hold so much promise for otherwise untreatable diseases,” Califf wrote. “Appreciate the heads up as the scientific community needs to be active about keeping research in these areas moving forward.”

While the long-term implications on vaccine research and policy are still unclear, Offit believes Kennedy’s stance could impact how pharma companies prioritize vaccine development. 

He could home in on the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, making vaccines more targetable for civil litigation — which could ultimately make pharma companies less likely to invest in vaccines.

“It’s not hard to drive these companies off. [Vaccines] are a fragile market,” Offit explained. “Vaccines are something you give once or a few times in a lifetime — they’re never going to compete with drugs that are taken every day.”

Moderna did not respond to a request for comment.

A ‘MAHA’ HHS takes shape

Under Kennedy’s purview, the various health departments under the HHS have experienced funding freezes and personnel cuts, including NIH research grants and USAID contracts — which can have a significant impact on research and development in the long-term.

As the new HHS continues to take shape, a number of public health issues will remain in the hotseat. Earlier in March, ProPublica reported that the National Cancer Institute advised its employees to avoid communications around a list of certain “controversial, high-profile or sensitive” issues unless approved by an official first.

Among the issues in the list is, unsurprisingly, vaccines. But the list also includes the Cancer Moonshot, bird flu, COVID-19, autism, diversity/equity efforts, fluoride and even peanut allergies.

These are all areas to watch as the MAHA movement becomes more tangible, and the appointments of heads for the NIH, CDC, CMS and FDA become official. Currently, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Mehmet Oz are en route to being confirmed for heads of NIH and CMS, respectively.

Ultimately, Kennedy’s position at HHS gives him a much “bigger platform” to espouse his inconsistent rhetoric and “scare people” around vaccines and other public health issues, according to Offit. He called for communications efforts that rebuild trust in the public around science.

“People trust him more than they would trust someone who has experience and expertise in vaccines,” Offit said. “So what that tells you is that we’ve critically lost trust.”

To read a April 2025 article on HHS layoffs hammering public health agencies and gutting federal comms teams, click here.