Can America’s Health Survive Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?

Opinion|How to Handle Kennedy as America’s Top Health Official

President-elect Donald Trump has named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his pick for secretary of health and human services. This was not my desired outcome. Like many liberals and health care providers, I’ve been alarmed at Mr. Kennedy’s dubious claims about public health and science.

In the spirit of wanting the best for the country, however, I believe there’s a health care agenda that finds common ground between people like myself — medical researchers and clinicians — and Mr. Kennedy. There are seeds of truth to some of what Mr. Kennedy says. We can’t spend four years simply fighting his agenda; noncooperation won't protect the integrity of American public health or advance its interests. Rather, there’s opportunity to leverage Mr. Kennedy’s skepticism and relative political independence for good — to turn his most valid criticisms of the American health care system into constructive reforms.

One place to start: Americans’ concerns about management of the Covid-19 pandemic. Mr. Kennedy’s rise to power was fueled by the anxieties of anti-vaxxers, and though the pandemic was rarely discussed during the election, its aftermath loomed large and may have contributed to Democrats’ defeat.

There’s been no meaningful, public reckoning from the federal government on the successes and failures of the nation’s pandemic response. Americans dealt with a patchwork of measures — school closures, mask requirements, limits on gatherings, travel bans — with variable successes and trade-offs. Many felt pressured into accepting recently developed, rapidly tested vaccines that were often mandated to attend school, keep one’s job or spend time in public spaces.

The lack of effort to build consensus about what the country did well and what to avoid next time is a missed opportunity to bring closure to a difficult era while preparing for the next pandemic.

Restoring people’s willingness to take vaccines is urgent, and Mr. Kennedy’s skepticism on this topic may counterintuitively be an advantage. His statements on vaccinations are more complex than they’re often caricatured to be. He’s said he is not categorically opposed to them or, as an official in the new Trump administration, planning to pull them from the market: “I’m not going to take away anybody’s vaccines, I’ve never been anti-vaccine,” he said recently in an interview with NBC News. But he consistently raises largely unsupported safety concerns and positions vaccine refusal as a matter of personal freedom.