Alarm bells are ringing again for health advocates.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. scrapped a meeting for a federal advisory task force charged with making recommendations for which preventive care treatments must be covered by insurance companies, including cancer screenings and tests for sexually transmitted infections. The future of the task force is now in doubt.
To advocates, this is another salvo in Kennedy’s broader effort to undermine public health, despite his promise during his Senate confirmation hearings to “empower” experts and promote “good science that is evidence-based.” Kennedy’s actions, they say, could disproportionately harm Black communities, who often rely on medical services at higher rates.
“This is a very sensitive time,” Jerry Abraham, the director of the CDU-KEDREN Mobile Street Medicine program in Los Angeles, told Capital B. “We could see increased burden and disease, increased mortality, and increased mistrust of our public sector entities, including anything federal government-related.”
Abraham is a family and community medicine physician, and he explained that it’s gotten more difficult in recent months for him to do his work as a health care professional and help the communities that need it most.
“No-show rates are up dramatically,” Abraham said, alluding to the impact of the uncertain political environment, including the uptick in ICE arrests. “People aren’t coming to clinic. They aren’t getting preventive services. They’re afraid to be in a government database.”
Kennedy’s postponement of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s meeting came weeks after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling kept the panel’s work intact.
That decision initially seemed like a victory to advocates who had been worried that Black communities would lose access to important drugs such as the HIV-prevention regimen PrEP. But the court affirmed Kennedy’s authority to ignore the task force’s recommendations and remove its members.
Here are three other actions that Kennedy has taken that advocates say could have major ramifications for Black Americans.
Gutting the Department of Health and Human Services
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is charged with protecting and promoting Americans’ health and providing access to key human services. However, the department hasn’t been spared from the administration’s effort to overhaul the federal government.
This spring, Kennedy laid off some 10,000 employees — including scientists, doctors, and researchers — across the department. The department’s employees were almost 20% Black, though Black Americans make up roughly 14% of the U.S. population. Kennedy also reduced the number of agencies under the department from 28 to 15.
These cuts eliminated experts who guide the U.S. on decisions regarding the approval of vaccines and new medical treatments. In addition to Washington, D.C., the layoffs affected Atlanta, where the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is headquartered.
The NAACP swiftly condemned the cuts, voicing concern for the health and safety of Black Americans and other vulnerable groups.
“Slashing thousands of jobs from the HHS workforce and reducing its divisions from 28 to 15 will adversely impact the department’s ability to provide essential services,” Chris Pernell, the director of the NAACP Center for Health Equity, said in a March statement.
He was referring to Medicare, Medicaid, and community health centers, among other services.
“Any reduction in our public health infrastructure — whether it’s workers or funding — only serves to make Americans sicker,” Pernell added. “And we know that when America gets a cold, Black people get the flu.”
The U.S. Supreme Court in July gave federal agencies the green-light to continue with mass layoffs, reversing a lower-court order. Some agencies, including the U.S. Department of State, resumed their firings. Reductions at the Department of Health and Human Services could be affected by other litigation.
Altering the vaccine landscape
Advocates worry that Kennedy’s cancellation of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force meeting could signal an abrupt policy change.
After canceling a June meeting with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice, Kennedy dismissed all 17 members of the government panel. The panel helps to determine the immunization schedule that informs which shots health insurers must cover. Kennedy said in a statement that the committee “has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”
Just days later, Kennedy announced a new panel. The committee now includes members known for espousing anti-vaccine rhetoric, undermining masking during the COVID-19 pandemic, and endorsing Kennedy’s decision to remove healthy children and pregnant women from the COVID-19 vaccine schedule, according to an NPR report.
Advocates fear that Kennedy’s erosion of vaccine guidelines will disproportionately harm Black communities.
“Limiting booster eligibility risks further compromising the already fragile health status of many Black Americans,” Oni Blackstock, a physician and founder of Health Justice, a racial and health equity consulting practice, previously told Capital B.
Black Americans are not only more likely to contract COVID-19, but are also more likely to be hospitalized from it, per data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“When [systemic barriers to health care access] combine with more restrictive vaccine guidelines,” Blackstock added, “it becomes even harder for Black Americans to get boosters and worsens existing health disparities.”
Doctors and public health organizations have joined together to file a lawsuit against the administration over vaccine policy changes.
Fueling misinformation controversies
In March, the Food and Drug Administration’s chief vaccine official left his job. In a resignation letter, Peter Marks laid out the reasons for his departure.
“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” Marks wrote, months before Kennedy cited nonexistent studies for a report on chronic disease in children.
In his letter, the former vaccine regulator noted his concern about the measles outbreak. There have been at least 1,288 confirmed cases — a record high since the disease was eliminated 25 years ago.
Rather than support the vaccines that have long proved effective against measles, Kennedy has embraced treatments that have sparked worry among experts about the possible spread of misinformation.
There have been other instances when Kennedy has shared misinformation.
During his Senate confirmation hearings, U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland challenged Kennedy over when he claimed, “We should not be giving Black people the same vaccine schedule that’s given to whites because their immune system is better than ours.”
Alsobrooks added, “With all due respect, that is so dangerous.”
Abraham, the family and community medicine physician, said that combatting misinformation among vulnerable groups only becomes more difficult when you have someone in Kennedy’s position fanning the flames.
“There are innocent grandmas sharing things on Facebook they believe are true,” he said. “But worse are the bad actors who are sending information [not backed by science] to Black and brown communities to divide us, or to make us make the wrong decision with the wrong information.”