RFK Jr., intention to focus on chronic diseases, continues to be persecuted by the impacts of HHS cuts

Therefore, from Washington, DC, while the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., walked to the top of an imposing sandstone arc in the rural area of ​​Arizona with a group of leaders of the Navajo nation, the impact of the cuts of his agency reached further.

Using a shirt with a clear request written on the front, “save the IHS works and diabetes program, a delegate from the Council of Navajo, Eugenia Charles-Newton, approached Kennedy to tell him that he was worried about the HHS cuts that impacted the diabetes program in which he trusted for attention.

Charles-Newton said he had heard that the funds were not being renewed for aspects of the Special Diabetes Program for Indians, a program within India Health Services (IHS) in HHS. The rapid restructuring in the HHS had made it difficult to track the real impact, he said.

Kennedy, who heard and then walked with his arm with Charles-Newton for the last stretch of the walk, promised to investigate the program and if the restructuring of the entire HHS was affected by the HHS. The improvements in the medical care of Navajo who was asking seemed “common sense,” he said.

The president of the Navajo Nation, Buu Nygren, also mentioned an impacted program: the Energy Assistance Program in the Hogar of Low Income, or Liheap, which provides financing assistance by the federal government to reduce public services invoices and help with the preparation climate. The people of Navajo, who live with the extreme temperatures of the desert, depended largely on his help, he said.

But the program was destroyed by the HHS cuts. Nygren told ABC News that he hoped that Kennedy, aware of his importance for the Navajo nation, could consider him restore him.

Since the beginning of layoffs, Kennedy has insisted that “essential services” would be reduced. “The cuts throughout our agency are not affecting science,” Kennedy told ABC News last week.

But the scope of the cuts, and the work impacted, from the assistance of the public services invoice in the Navajo nation, to the investigation of black pulmonary disease for coal miners, to a division that monitors exposure to lead among children, has followed Kennedy dogs, asking questions about their supervision and participation in the greatest restructuring.

In total, tribal leaders flatly appreciated Kennedy’s visit, which was part of his first important trip as HHS secretary. The trip focused on fighting chronic disease, with great emphasis on the importance of healthy and unprocessed foods.

Nicknamed the Make America Healthy Again tour, Kennedy also visited Utah, the first state of the nation to approve a law to eliminate the fluoride from drinking water systems and met with local officials. While he was there, he toured the OSHER Center for Integrative Health at the University of Utah, which aims to focus the healthy diet and exercise in the medical care conversation, and approached his “food pharmacy”, which offers healthy foods prescribed to patients.

In Arizona, who approved a law to prohibit SNAP receptors to use Soda’s assistance, Kennedy held a press conference with legislators who defended the bill and toured a Phoenix health center that offers healthy cooking programs for local native communities. He also stopped for a panel discussion at the Tribal 2025 self -government conference, sitting with tribal leaders, including the president of the Wampanoag tribe, which he described with love to spend time during his childhood in Massachusetts.

In the Navajo nation, the crowd that gathered at the foot of Window Rock, a monument, praised him for his devoted attention to the problems of obsolete medical centers, the lack of water infrastructure and inappropriate access to healthy foods.

“The processed food harms us all. He disproportionately directs the natives,” Kennedy told the group of leaders in Navajo, who nodded.

But they also took the opportunity to tell Kennedy that they needed more support, no less, warning against the impact of their agency’s cuts. It was a conversation that Kennedy was receptive.

“We will all return with a long list of tasks that we must perform. And today I will give you my commitment that I am available and listening to it,” said Kennedy.

In a interview With CBS News that was broadcast on Wednesday, Kennedy gave a tone similar to what he told tribal leaders in the Navajo nation, that he would analyze the cuts that was not aware and restored to those who had interrupted the “scientific research.”

“There are a series of studies that were called that they caught our attention and that they did not deserve to be cut, and we reinstall them. Our purpose is not to reduce any level of scientific research, that is important,” Kennedy saying In an interview with CBS News on Wednesday.

Kennedy’s comments occur after he also told ABC News last week that studies and staff were being restored, adding that the plan was always to make great cuts and then “remedy” errors.

But government officials then retreated those comments, and have remained largely together with the cuts, which reached almost a fifth of the workforce both in the centers for disease control and prevention and in the food and medicines administration.

On Wednesday, the HHS did not respond to an ABC News request for clarity on the research studies to which Kennedy referred to in his interview with CBS News and if they had been reinstated.

When asked about several cuts in the CBS interview, from a subsidy for diabetes research at Michigan University to more than $ 11 billion in cuts to Covid recovery efforts at the state level, Kennedy said he was not “family”, but he would investigate it.

In all CDC, the FDA and the National Institute of Health, three of the main public health arms of the HHS, there have been no significant changes in the cuts that affected some 10,000 employees last week.