What The New Trump Presidency Could Mean For Public Health
With Donald Trump having successfully secured the presidency of the United States, significant shifts in American public health policy could be forthcoming.
Much of the attention on Trump’s public health policy has centered on reproductive rights, funding for federal agencies such as the CDC and on curbing the Affordable Care Act. This could unequivocally have profound effects on key health issues such as accessibility to medical care. As an example, repealing the Affordable Care Act would make it harder for millions of Americans with preexisting conditions to get adequate and effective healthcare coverage.
What could be even more troubling for public health is President-elect Trump’s endorsement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who allegedly will have an immense influence on public health policy for the next four years. The president-elect has said he would let Kennedy “go wild on health.”
Kennedy is a known vaccine skeptic and has controversial views on vaccine safety. He has repeatedly claimed that vaccines are linked to autism. This association has not proven to be true based on science or evidence-based studies. In fact, the original research that linked autism to vaccines was flawed and was subsequently retracted, and no current research has shown a positive link or correlation between vaccines and autism.
Having a public policy leader who promotes vaccine hesitancy could have detrimental effects on public health. As an example, consider measles, a disease that was considered to be eradicated in 2000 because of successful childhood vaccination rates. However, to date, over 270 cases of measles have been reported this year alone in over half the United States, according to the CDC.
There really should be zero cases of measles, but because of international travel and vaccine hesitancy that has led to decreased vaccination rates in children, cases of measles are starting to emerge again in America. This could be further amplified if public health policy officials promote vaccine hesitancy without relying on evidence-based studies to guide important decisions on health.
More recently, Kennedy wrote on the social platform X, “On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.”
In 2015, the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service advised a uniform concentration of 0.7 mg/L of fluoride in drinking water. In that amount, fluoride is known to prevent and protect against dental cavities and tooth decay. In fact, fluoride reduces tooth decay by 25% in children and adults, according to the American Dental Association. Removing fluoride in this amount from public drinking water could result in a large increase of childhood cavities as well as enormous spending on otherwise preventable dental procedures.
Fluoride in excess amounts can be harmful to the body. Deleterious effects include discoloration of the teeth, bony deformities as well as moderate evidence that high levels of fluoride could result in lower IQ for children. None of these harmful effects have been shown to occur at levels currently used in drinking water in America.
The health of millions of Americans should be informed by evidence-based medicine and rigorous data that has been proved to show what works and what doesn’t. If public policy is left to be decided by the whims and opinions of leaders, the outcome could prove disastrous for the well-being of many Americans.
As Dr. Ashish Jha writes on his X profile, “an ounce of data is worth a thousand pounds of opinion.”