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…