STAT+: RFK Jr. declared war on chronic disease. First comes the battle over priorities
How would you solve the chronic disease epidemic? Here's STAT's extensive new data analysis, and nine ways to tackle the problem.
WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faces a White House deadline this week. His Make America Healthy Again commission must deliver a diagnosis of the nation’s epidemic of chronic disease. By summer’s end, it will need to offer solutions.
In between comes the battle over priorities. Should the commission go all-in on obesity? Focusing on the fastest-rising conditions would be a sensible approach, but so would working on the sickest parts of the country, or the shared risk factors for many diseases. It might feel pressing, in the age of the U.S. DOGE Service, to take on the conditions that cost the nation the most, but it would also make sense to sink more money into long-underfunded disease prevention efforts.
The epidemic takes on a different tone and tenor depending on what you focus on and where you look. If you were on the commission, what priorities would you choose?
STAT has gathered and analyzed various sources of publicly available health data to establish a baseline of chronic disease in the U.S. Finding timely and complete date on the prevalence and costs of chronic illness is a pressing concern for decision-makers, but remains a challenge. To close that gap, STAT conducted original statistical analyses, generating novel data points on a wide range of diseases and their consequences. This investigation — which used annual Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality — could help researchers and policymakers better understand the problems facing the nation.
Below, we lay out that overview, along with nine different sets of priorities to give the public — and the commission — a chance to decide which they think is the most important, and thus which solutions make most sense.
