By Darius Tahir, KFF Health News
As health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wields one of the louder megaphones the federal government has. Yet he insists he doesn’t want to impose his opinions on Americans.
“I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me,” Kennedy told a Democratic congressman in May.
Kennedy once expressed different views — for example, about the need to proselytize about exercise. As he said on a podcast, he wants to use the “bully pulpit” to “obliterate the delicacy” with which Americans discuss fitness and explain that “suffering” is virtuous.
“We need to establish an ethic that you’re not a good parent unless your kids are doing some kind of physical activity,” Kennedy told the podcaster in September 2024.
The Department of Health and Human Services is tasked with communicating information to protect and improve the health and well-being of every American. It provides reminders about vaccinations and screenings; alerts about which food is unsafe; and useful, everyday tips about subjects such as sunscreen and, yes, exercise.
Under Kennedy’s watch, though, HHS has compromised once-fruitful campaigns promoting immunizations and other preventive health measures. On Instagram, the agency often emphasizes Kennedy’s personal causes, his pet projects, or even the secretary himself. Former agency employees say communications have a more political edge, with “Make America Healthy Again” frequently featured in press releases.
Interviews with over 20 former and current agency employees provide a look inside a health department where personality and politics steer what is said to the public. KFF Health News granted many of these people anonymity because they fear retribution.
One sign of change is what is no longer, or soon will not be, amplified — for instance, acclaimed anti-smoking campaigns making a dent in one of Kennedy’s priorities, chronic disease.
Another sign is what gets celebrated. On the official HHS Instagram account this year, out were posts saluting Juneteenth and Father’s Day. In, under Kennedy, were posts marking President Donald Trump’s birthday and Hulk Hogan’s death.
Commenting on such changes, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in an email that “DEI is gone, thanks to the Trump administration.”
Some elected officials are pointedly not promoting Kennedy as a source of health care information. Regarding the secretary’s announcement citing unproven links between Tylenol and autism, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told MSNBC that, “if I were a woman, I’d be talking to my doctor and not taking, you know, advice from RFK or any other government bureaucrat, for that matter.” (Thune’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)
At least four polls since January show trust in Kennedy as a medical adviser is low. In one poll, from The Economist and YouGov, barely over a quarter of respondents said they trusted Kennedy “a lot” or “somewhat.”
The department’s online messaging looks “a lot more like propaganda than it does public health,” said Kevin Griffis, who worked in communications at the CDC under President Joe Biden and left the agency in March.
Transition to a New Administration
The new administration inaugurated dramatic changes. Upon arrival, political appointees froze the health agency’s outside communications on a broader scale than in previous changeovers, halting everything from routine webpage updates to meetings with grant recipients. The pause created logistical snafus: For example, one CDC employee described being forced to cancel, and later rebook, advertising campaigns — at greater cost to taxpayers.
Even before the gag order was lifted in the spring, the tone and direction of HHS’ public communications had shifted.
According to data shared by iSpot.tv, a market research firm that tracks television advertising, at least four HHS ads about vaccines ended within two weeks of Trump’s inauguration.
“Flu campaigns were halted,” during a season in which a record number of children died from influenza, Deb Houry, who had resigned as the CDC’s chief medical officer, said in a Sept. 17 congressional hearing.
Instead of urging people to get vaccinated, HHS officials contemplated more-ambivalent messaging, said Griffis, then the CDC’s director of communications. According to Griffis, other former agency employees, and communications reviewed by KFF Health News, Nixon contemplated a campaign that would put more emphasis on vaccine risks. It would “be promoting, quote-unquote, ‘informed choice,’” Griffis said.
Nixon called the claim “categorically false.” Still, the department continues to push anti-vaccine messaging. In November, the CDC updated a webpage to assert the false claim that vaccines may cause autism.
Messaging related to tobacco control has been pulled back, according to Brian King, an executive at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, as well as multiple current and former CDC employees. Layoffs, administrative leaves, and funding turmoil have drained offices at the CDC and the FDA focused on educating people about the risks of smoking and vaping, King said.
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Four current and former CDC employees told KFF Health News that “Tips From Former Smokers,” a campaign credited with helping approximately a million people quit smoking, is in danger. Ordinarily, a contract for the next year’s campaign would have been signed by now. But, as of Nov. 21, there was no contractor, the current and former employees said.
Nixon did not respond to a question from KFF Health News regarding plans for the program.
“We’re currently in an apocalypse for national tobacco education campaigns in this country,” King said.
Kennedy’s HHS has a different focus for its education campaigns, including the “Take Back Your Health” campaign, for which the department solicited contractors this year to produce “viral” and “edgy” content to urge Americans to exercise.
An earlier version of the campaign’s solicitation asked for partners to boost wearables, such as gadgets that track steps or glucose levels — reflecting a Kennedy push for every American to be wearing such a device within four years.
The source of funds for the exercise campaign? In the spring, leadership of multiple agencies discussed using funding for the CDC’s Tips From Former Smokers campaign, employees from those agencies said. By the fall, the smoking program hadn’t spent all its funds, the current and former CDC employees said.
Nixon did not respond to questions about the source of funding for the exercise campaign.
Food Fight
At the FDA, former employees said they noticed new types of political interference as Trump officials took the reins, sometimes making subtle tweaks to public communications, sometimes changing wholesale what messages went out. The interventions into messaging — what was said, but also what went unsaid — proved problematic, they said.
Early this year, multiple employees told KFF Health News, Nixon gave agency employees a quick deadline to gather a list of all policy initiatives underway on infant formula. That was then branded “ Operation Stork Speed,” as if it were a new push by a new administration.
Marianna Naum, a former acting director of external communications and consumer education at the FDA, said she supports parts of the Trump administration’s agenda. But she said she disagreed with how it handled Operation Stork Speed. “It felt like they were trying to put out information so they can say: ‘Look at the great work. Look how fast we did it,’” she said.
Nixon called the account “false” without elaborating. KFF Health News spoke with three other employees with the same recollections of the origins of Operation Stork Speed.
“Things that didn’t fit within their agenda, they were downplayed,” Naum said.
For example, she said, Trump political appointees resisted a proposed press release noting agency approval of cell-cultured pork — that is, pork grown in a lab. Similar products have raised the ire of ranchers and farmers working in typically GOP-friendly industries. States such as Florida have banned lab-grown meat.
The agency ultimately issued the press release. But a review of the agency’s archives showed it hasn’t put out press releases about two later approvals of cell-cultured meat.
Wide-ranging layoffs have also hit the FDA’s food office hard, leaving fewer people to make sure news gets distributed properly and promptly. Former employees say notices about recalled foods aren’t circulated as widely as they used to be, meaning fewer eyeballs on alerts about contaminated ice cream, peaches, and the like.
Nixon did not respond to questions about changes in food recalls. Overall, Nixon answered nine of 53 questions posed by KFF Health News.
Pushing Politics
Televised HHS public service campaigns earned nearly 7.3 billion fewer impressions in the first half of 2025 versus the same period in 2022, according to iSpot data, with the drop being concentrated in pro-vaccine messaging. Other types of ads, such as those covering substance use and mental health, also fell. Data from the marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower shows similar drops in HHS ad spending online.
With many of the longtime professionals laid off and new political appointees in place atop the hierarchy, a new communications strategy — bearing the hallmarks of Kennedy’s personality — is being built, said the current and former HHS employees, plus public health officials interviewed by KFF Health News.
Whereas in 2024, the agency would mostly post public health resources such as the 988 suicide hotline on its Instagram page, its feed in 2025 features more of the health secretary himself. Through the end of August, according to a KFF Health News review, 77 of its 101 posts featured Kennedy — often fishing, biking, or doing pullups, as well as pitching his policies.
By contrast, only 146 of the agency’s 754 posts last year, or about 20%, featured Xavier Becerra, Kennedy’s predecessor.
In 2024, on Instagram, the agency promoted Medicare and individual insurance open enrollment; in 2025, the agency has not.
In 2024, the agency’s Instagram feed included some politicking as Biden ran for reelection, but the posts were less frequent and often indirect — for instance, touting a policy enacted under Biden’s signature legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, but without mentioning the name of the bill or its connection to the president.
In 2025, sloganeering is a frequent feature of the agency’s Kennedy-era Instagram. Through the end of August, “Make America Healthy Again” or variants of the catchphrase featured in at least 48% of posts.
Amid the layoffs, the agency made a notable addition to its team. It hired a state legislative spokesperson as a “rapid response” coordinator, a role that employees from previous administrations couldn’t recall previously existing at HHS.
“Like other Trump administration agencies, HHS is continuously rebutting fake news for the benefit of the public,” Nixon said when asked about the role.
On the day Houry and Susan Monarez, the CDC leader ousted in late August, testified before senators about Kennedy’s leadership, the agency’s X feed posted clips belittling the former officials. The department also derisively rebuts unfavorable news coverage.
“It’s very interesting to watch the memeification of the United States and critical global health infrastructure,” said McKenzie Wilson, an HHS spokesperson under Biden. “The entire purpose of this agency is to inform the public about safety, emergencies as they happen.”
‘Clear, Powerful Messages From Bobby’
Kennedy’s Make Our Children Healthy Again report, released in September, proposes public awareness campaigns on subjects such as illegal vaping and fluoride levels in water, while reassuring Americans that the regulatory system for pesticides is “robust.”
Those priorities reflect — and are amplified by — cadres of activists outside government. Since the summer, HHS officials have appeared on Zoom calls with aligned advocacy groups, trying to drum up support for Kennedy’s agenda.
On one call— on which, according to host Tony Lyons, activists “representing over 250 million followers on social media” were registered — famous names such as motivational speaker Tony Robbins gave pep talks about how to influence elected officials and the public.
“Each week, you’re gonna get clear, powerful messages from Bobby, from HHS, from their team,” Robbins said. “And your mission is to amplify it, to make it your own, to speak from your soul, to be bold, to be relentless, to be loving, to be loud, you know, because this is how we make the change.”
The communications strategy captivates the public, but it also confuses it.
Anne Zink, formerly the chief medical officer for Alaska, said she thought Kennedy’s messaging was some of the catchiest of any HHS director.
But, she said, in her work as an emergency physician, she’s seen the consequences of his health department’s policies on her puzzled patients. Patients question vaccines. Children show up with gastrointestinal symptoms Zink says she suspects are related to raw milk consumption.
“I increasingly see people say, ‘I just don’t know what to trust, because I just hear all sorts of things out there,’” she said.
©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
