President Donald Trump promised to secure the southern border, deport illegal aliens, place reciprocal tariffs on trading partners to level the playing field, and bring jobs home to American shores. He has made substantial progress on all these fronts, but an additional priority was his promise to focus on improving public health under the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.
The President promised to prioritize reducing rates of childhood disease, push for research into nutrition, and work with the food and agriculture industries to improve food quality. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), under President Trump’s and Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s guidance, is already launching into action. In May it released the MAHA report exposing the root cause of childhood disease, and it is encouraging states to prioritize SNAP waivers that focus on healthy whole foods and phase out petroleum-based food dyes, among other initiatives.
President Trump and MAHA’s root-cause approach to addressing health outcomes is very popular. According to a Sep. 2 The Economist/ YouGov survey, a majority of Americans have a favorable view of the MAHA movement. Americans have a favorable view of MAHA by fifteen percentage points, with 46 percent of Americans holding a favorable view of MAHA while 31 percent hold an unfavorable view of the movement.
HHS’s call to phase out synthetic dyes in American foods is extremely popular, with 80 percent of Americans supporting the practice, while 8 percent oppose it.
Requiring nutrition education in K-12 is also extremely popular, with 85 percent of Americans favoring the proposal, while 6 percent oppose it.
Even on allegedly controversial moves, such as making certain unhealthy foods like soda and candy ineligible under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program, Americans favor the policy by eight points, 48 percent to 40 percent. Democrats oppose the move by 33 points, in an odd show of support for childhood obesity.
While President Trump’s MAHA movement may not be at the top of the list in terms of priorities for voters — inflation and jobs remain the top concerns — healthcare is often in the top three to five concerns for Americans in recent public opinion data.
In the latest The Economist/ YouGov survey, healthcare is the third most important issue to Americans out of fifteen issues including inflation, jobs, the border, taxes, foreign policy, climate change and crime. Nine percent of Americans say healthcare is their top priority, following 24 percent who say inflation is their top priority and 14 percent who say jobs and the economy are.
The Trump Administration should be commended for addressing healthcare concerns that have persisted for decades, and that contribute to alarming cultural issues such as declining fertility rates. President Trump is doing exactly what conservatives need to do to continue to build out a solid base of support and serve the public at the same time.
Making public health a priority is significant not only because the United States is facing a health crisis, but because politically, healthcare is one of only two top-level concerns that Democrats lead on in public opinion surveys (the other one is the environment). Republicans lead on the economy, the border, inflation, jobs, foreign policy, taxes, and crime in virtually all high-quality surveys. Democrats have traditionally held an edge on healthcare. With the modern Democratic Party’s approach to healthcare focused on denying medical reality and encouraging experimental medical procedures on children, public opinion could shift — and likely already is — on which party is better equipped to address public health.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
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