How can RFK Jr ‘Make America healthy again’? He is ignoring the two biggest killers of American children | Devi Sridhar

The US health secretary’s latest report is more interested in vaccine scepticism than the brutal toll inflicted by guns and road traffic accidents

“M

ake America healthy again”. We can all get behind this slogan and agree that much more could be done to improve the health of people living in the US. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health and human services secretary, recently released a report detailing the challenge of the US’s health. About 90% of it outlines the high rates of obesity, mental health issues and chronic disease, 10% covers vaccine scepticism, and 0% looks at solutions or any discussions of the systemic social and economic issues that drive much of the US’s health problems.

But what surprised me more was a notable omission of the two biggest killers of American children. American children aren’t just unhealthier. They’re more likely to die in the first 19 years of life because of guns – both homicides and suicides – or in a road traffic accident than children in comparable countries. How can an entire report be written without mentioning these factors, and how unique the US is in the burden of disability and death they cause?

Take guns. In 2020, gun injuries overtook car crashes as the leading cause of death in the US for children and adolescents. From 2019 to 2021, there was a 23% increase in gun deaths among Americans of all ages, while gun deaths among children and teens rose 50% in the same period. Per 100,000 people, the US in 2019 had nearly 100 times as many gun homicides as Britain. Even countries such as Canada, which ranks in the world top 10 in civilian gun ownership, has about seven times fewer gun homicides than the US, and about half as many suicides involving guns – both adjusted for population. Outliers on the more positive end include Japan and South Korea, which have close to zero gun-related deaths each year. For the four years between 2020 and 2024, the US averaged almost two mass shootings a day. They’re happening so often that the media often just doesn’t report them any more. It’s not news. It’s just daily life.