Overview

• The strategy outlines 128 recommendations on children’s health, diagnosing poor diet, chemical exposures, overmedication, inactivity, poor sleep, excessive screen time and stress as key drivers.
• It proposes defining ultraprocessed foods, requiring nutrition education in medical schools, reviewing vaccine schedules and investigating injuries, closing the GRAS additive loophole, updating sunscreen rules, promoting breastfeeding, and exploring in‑kind “MAHA boxes” for SNAP.
• Public‑health experts fault the plan for omitting major causes of child mortality and harm, including gun violence, motor‑vehicle deaths, poverty, systemic racism and climate‑related risks.
• Researchers and advocates say the document offers few enforceable policies, prioritizing further study and voluntary industry cooperation without clear timelines.
• Critics also note tensions with current policy choices, citing cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, the elimination of CDC programs, proposed deep NIH reductions, and language perceived as too accommodating to pesticide and agriculture interests.