White House report to outline causes of America's declining health

By Ahmed Aboulenein, Renee Hickman and Leah Douglas

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A commission led by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and tasked by President Donald Trump with investigating chronic illness is set to deliver a report outlining its findings on Thursday.

Trump signed an executive order in February establishing the Make America Healthy Again Commission to investigate chronic illness and deliver an action plan to fight childhood diseases. Thursday's report outlining the causes was due this week and will be followed by a strategy document due in August.

The commission is jointly run by HHS and the White House, with Kennedy serving as its chair and the Domestic Policy Council chief as executive director. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and other cabinet members sit on it, as do federal health agency chiefs and senior White House officials.

Supporters of Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement for which the commission is named, said they expected it to outline causes they had long blamed for the decline in American health and sum up Kennedy's accomplishments during his first 100 days in the job, but that it would bring no surprises.

"Nobody's talked about any bombshells coming out or anything like that," said Jeff Hutt, who was national field director of Kennedy's presidential campaign and now runs a group supporting his food and health goals.

The report is likely to outline efforts Kennedy has already announced, said Hutt, including studying the safety of vaccines, making changes to the food safety process, and removing some dyes and petroleum-based products from the food supply.

The report will also tackle pesticides, drawing concern from farm groups that are wary of what it will say about glyphosate. Some environmental groups argue the use of the chemical to dry crops and harvest them faster leads to human exposure of it.

Farm lobby groups warned that criticizing specific farm practices could impede collaboration on the administration's health agenda and put food production at risk.

The groups should not be worried, said Hutt, because Kennedy has already publicly reassured them there would be nothing in the report they would find shocking or upsetting.

It will likely focus on data and raising awareness, rather than policy proposals, said prominent MAHA activist Vani Hari, who authors "The Food Babe" blog.

"Once somebody learns this information, they can't unlearn it, and it changes their behavior," she said. "They make different purchasing decisions at the grocery store."

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein and Leah Douglas in Washington, Renee Hickman in Chicago; Editing by Leslie Adler)