GROWING AMERICA'S CULTURE OF HEALTH
MAHA kickstarts health, we the people carry it forward.
Only a week after America’s presidential election, a good portion of our country is still reeling and concerned about our future, while a majority celebrates with hope for better times. What happens over the next four years will not depend solely on government actions, however; it will depend just as much on how we as a people chose to participate in supporting or resisting its decisions.
Living Well Locally is, of course, encouraged by the inclusion of Make America Healthy Again in President-elect Trump’s administration. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s campaign created MAHA when he threw his support to President Trump only weeks before the election. A member of a storied Democratic family moving to support a Republican was politically unthinkable. Yet, RFK Jr’s reasoning was simple: after working for four decades on health and environmental issues in the courtroom, he has prayed diligently for an opportunity to do so in Washington. He now has that chance.
President Trump has asked Kennedy to achieve a “measurable improvement in the health of children and chronic disease within two years”. While changes in people and policies at the national level will go a long way toward doing this, ‘we the people’ at the local level also have strong vested interests in seeing our children and our country heal from chronic diseases.
Making America (truly) healthy again requires significant change - from the White House, through the bureaucracies, into our local fields and clinics, and into our homes. Significantly different paradigms in medicine, agriculture, and food systems will need to be engaged in major change. The transition could get bumpy.
And yet, it is just such paradigm shifting that can become humanity’s most important teacher ever. Will we continue to erode and destroy our soils, or will we regenerate them? Will we continue to treat our symptoms, or will we embrace looking for their root causes? Will we expect government to make us healthy or will we want to be part of the solution? Immense learning lies ahead.
Our homes and communities have a crucial role to play in MAHA, and yet we need Washington to kickstart the process. We need our elected officials and government agencies to support small farms and healthy food, to listen to all the voices and put all the science on the table, to give us objective not politicized understandings of climate change and foreign affairs, financial systems and economic strategies.
Still, it is ‘we the people’ who shop at farmers markets, clean toxins from our homes, and put real food in the mouths of our children. It will be through our daily efforts that children throw off sickness, parents move beyond cancer, and our elders regain their ability to offer wisdom. We are the ones who will actually create the health that America so desperately needs. We are the creators of the culture of health that will one day offer wellness to everyone in equal measure.
We are all in this together. Are we ready?