Food was the focus of U.S. Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Wednesday visit to Harrisburg, but many Pennsylvania Democrats used the trip to push back on his other health policy positions, including a recent rescheduling of childhood immunizations.
Kennedy kicked off a nationwide tour to boost new nutrition guidelines in a packed state Capitol rotunda. Joined by more than two dozen Republican lawmakers and toting a printout of the Trump administration's new food pyramid, he encouraged Pennsylvanians to "eat real food." The new approach emphasizes consumption of dairy, protein and vegetables, while urging Americans away from refined carbohydrates and heavily processed foods.
Previous dietary guidelines, Kennedy said, "poisoned an American generation and we're now feeling the effects. We are now cutting the red tape." Kennedy also touted the Trump administration's efforts to lower prescription drug costs, root out social services fraud and study infant formula ingredients.
In his prepared remarks, Kennedy said little about his controversial push to pare back federal vaccination guidelines. But he defended the new vaccination schedule when questioned about it by reporters.
"Our revision of the vaccine schedule makes, what we believe, the best scientific judgment about how Americans can protect their health, but they also recognize that other people may have opinions," Kennedy said. "We don't take the vaccines away from anybody. If you want to get a vaccine, you can get it … and you can get it paid [for] by your insurance.
"I think we envisioned that different people would be doing different things, but it ends the coercion," Kennedy said. "We're adopting the same schedules that our peer nations use in Europe and we think we're giving the best science and best judgment that looks at both benefits and risks to the American people."
But when the U.S. reduced its recommended childhood vaccines from 18 down to 11, a review of many peer-nations' vaccine recommendations shows that the U.S. dropped far behind most of its contemporaries. While previous American immunization policy put it at the top of the list, the U.S. is now ranked 16th, behind South Korea, the U.K. and neighbors Canada and Mexico.
McCandless state House member Arvind Venkat, who is also the legislature's only physician, said he empathizes with those who believe the country's health care system needs an overhaul, especially when it comes to cost.
"But I am very clear that RFK. Jr. is selling an illusion," Venkat said in an interview. "He is an extraordinarily grave threat to the health and wellbeing of our fellow Pennsylvanians."
"[Kennedy] has a radical agenda of saying that he wants vaccines to be pulled from the market," Venkat added. "He keeps saying, 'If someone wants a vaccine, they can get it.' But the steps that he's taken are making it harder for people to get vaccines."
Among those moves include adding vaccine skeptics to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's advisory panel. And data show recent vaccine hesitancy since the COVID-19 pandemic has had local effects, too. Pittsburgh-area kindergarteners were vaccinated at rates below herd immunity for measles, mumps and rubella, according to data from the 2023-2024 school year.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, has allied Pennsylvania with other states to share regional health data amid federal changes. And he's urged private insurers to continue offering all vaccines recommended for children under the Biden administration.
At the legislative level, Venkat has introduced bills to protect vaccine access, with proposals that range from maintaining former FDA immunization schedules to requiring pharmacists to administer shots. Both measures passed the state House with the support of all Democrats and two Republicans; they now await committee consideration in the Republican-controlled Senate.
(Democrats who co-sponsored Venkat's bills — such as Bridget Kosierowski, a registered nurse, and Tarik Khan, a nurse practitioner — welcomed reporters in the state House majority caucus room, just off the Capitol rotunda, after Kennedy's remarks.)
And while Venkat says he has worked with Harrisburg Republicans on food safety legislation, he doesn't agree with many members of the GOP who spoke before Kennedy took the podium.
"There are areas where we can work together," Venkat said, such as a bill he drafted along with South Hills Republican Rep. Natalie Mihalek to raise awareness about food allergies in restaurants.
But some of Kennedy's federal food reforms are "first fundamentally based on an anti-scientific ideology, where you ignore evidence that doesn't conform to your particular viewpoint," Venkat added.
Mihalek herself introduced a bipartisan package of food-related reform bills, which she said came about before Kennedy was at the helm of the U.S. Health Department. She wasn't in attendance at the rally Wednesday, but Kennedy and other Republicans gave her a shout out for the proposed legislation.
In an interview on her way to Washington, D.C. to advocate for federal food reforms that include eliminating the use of pesticides on crops, Mihalek distanced herself from Kennedy's vaccination policies: For her own children, she said, "We always followed the CDC recommendations." But she hailed other efforts by the administration.
Most Americans expect that food in the grocery store is healthy and safe, she said. "To find out that that's not the case is really what has led me [to introduce food reform bills]," she added. "But I think RFK just simply talking about it and creating that awareness has certainly helped people just make better choices."
Squirrel Hill Democratic Rep. Dan Frankel, who chairs the House Health committee, put out a statement condemning Kennedy's policies.
"Cloaking long-discredited misinformation in the language of 'health' does not make it true, and it does not make it safe," Frankel said.
"Parents deserve clear, fact-based information and full context when making decisions about their children's health. What they do not deserve is a national figure deliberately sowing mistrust in pediatricians, scientists and public health professionals whose work has saved countless lives."
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