{"id":13321,"date":"2026-05-15T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=13321"},"modified":"2026-05-15T18:30:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:30:00","slug":"kennedy-swaps-vaccine-rhetoric-for-story-time-but-cant-quite-change-the-subject","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=13321","title":{"rendered":"Kennedy Swaps Vaccine Rhetoric for Story Time but Can\u2019t Quite Change the Subject"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here in Washington,\u00a0we\u2019ve\u00a0been hearing about tensions between the White House and one of its most controversial\u00a0\u2014\u00a0but,\u00a0at least\u00a0in\u00a0some\u00a0circles,\u00a0most\u00a0popular\u00a0\u2014\u00a0figures: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/p>\n

Polling of likely voters\u00a0indicates\u00a0that\u00a0the\u00a0Health and\u00a0Human\u00a0Services secretary\u00a0can be an asset to Republicans when\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0talking about improving the nation\u2019s food supply or labeling\u00a0ultraprocessed\u00a0foods. But when\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0talking about removing\u00a0recommendations\u00a0for\u00a0routine childhood vaccinations, he can be a detriment.<\/p>\n

So, when I learned Kennedy would be taking his show on the road to my home state of Ohio,\u00a0where populist figures\u00a0tend to perform well,\u00a0I knew I had to be there.<\/p>\n

How would a politician who\u00a0built his\u00a0reputation\u00a0seeding widespread doubts about routine childhood immunizations stay away from one of the core messages\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0preached for years?<\/p>\n

Well, it turns out,\u00a0he\u00a0starts by reading a book about\u00a0a\u00a0trash truck\u00a0to\u00a0preschoolers.<\/p>\n

The trip took us across northern Ohio, from a regenerative farm in Huron owned by two brothers who grow colorful vegetables to\u00a0the Cleveland Clinic, where Kennedy masked up\u00a0entering an operating room\u00a0of\u00a0a heart surgery patient.<\/p>\n

In the end, though, Kennedy\u00a0couldn\u2019t\u00a0escape the vaccine talk.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the City Club of Cleveland, Kennedy raised doubts about the safety of\u00a0vaccines\u00a0that had been\u00a0\u2014\u00a0up until\u00a0last\u00a0year\u00a0\u2014\u00a0universally recommended to prevent\u00a0hepatitis B, an\u00a0incurable disease.<\/p>\n

He called for parents to \u201cbe given that choice\u201d on\u00a0administering\u00a0the vaccine\u00a0to newborns,\u00a0a remark that gave way to cheers and applause\u00a0from\u00a0half the room.<\/p>\n

The other half groaned and booed.<\/p>\n

When I sat down with the health secretary for\u00a0a few\u00a0minutes\u00a0in an\u00a0Ohio farmhouse, Kennedy ticked off his accomplishments during his first year in office;\u00a0redesigning federal nutrition guidelines and defining\u00a0ultraprocessed\u00a0foods for the American public were among them.<\/p>\n

As his list grew longer, I thought about the mothers\u00a0I\u2019d\u00a0talked to over the last year who had become increasingly\u00a0nervous\u00a0about taking their\u00a0infants\u00a0out in crowded places\u00a0amid a raging measles outbreak and the growing threat from other infectious diseases.<\/p>\n

What was his message for those parents, I asked?<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say everybody should be vaccinated\u00a0\u2014\u00a0against measles,\u201d Kennedy told me. \u201cBut we need to pay\u00a0more and more\u00a0attention to chronic\u00a0disease.\u00a0All of\u00a0the vaccine-preventable, infectious diseases put together kill\u00a0probably 10,000\u00a0Americans a year.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The number of deaths is\u00a0closer to\u00a050,000<\/a>,\u00a0according to scientific researchers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\n

\t\t<\/p><\/a>\n

RFK Jr. Swaps Vaccine Talk for Healthy Foods and Reading to Tots in Push To Woo Voters<\/a><\/h2>\n
\n

He tested robotic hands on a heart surgery patient and chewed on microgreens in Ohio, but Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. couldn\u2019t dodge questions about the Trump administration\u2019s more controversial policies.<\/p>\n

By Amanda Seitz<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMay 13, 2026\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

This <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/public-health\/the-week-in-brief-rfk-jr-ohio-visit-maha-rhetoric\/”>article<\/a&gt<\/a>; first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org”>KFF<\/a> Health News<\/a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/”>Creative<\/a> Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<img src=”https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2023\/04\/kffhealthnews-icon.png?w=150&quot<\/a>; style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”><\/p>\n

<img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/?republication-pixel=true&post=2238096&amp;ga4=G-J74WWTKFM0&quot<\/a>; style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here in Washington,\u00a0we\u2019ve\u00a0been hearing about tensions between the White House and one of its most controversial\u00a0\u2014\u00a0but,\u00a0at least\u00a0in\u00a0some\u00a0circles,\u00a0most\u00a0popular\u00a0\u2014\u00a0figures: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Polling of likely voters\u00a0indicates\u00a0that\u00a0the\u00a0Health and\u00a0Human\u00a0Services secretary\u00a0can be an asset to Republicans when\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0talking about improving the nation\u2019s food supply or labeling\u00a0ultraprocessed\u00a0foods. But when\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0talking about removing\u00a0recommendations\u00a0for\u00a0routine childhood vaccinations, he can be a detriment. So, when I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13321"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}