Children's Health Defense, Make America Healthy Again, and Waterkeeper Alliance — what each one was built to do, and what it has done.
The three organizations
He didn’t join movements. He started them.
Three organizations, founded across three decades, all built the same way: find the people being harmed, read every document, and make the case in public until something moves.
01
Children's Health Defense
Founded 2016
Founder · Chairman 2015–2023
“Fighting for children, parents, and the right to know.”
Kennedy founded Children's Health Defense and chaired it until 2023, when he stepped down to run for president. The group frames the rise in childhood chronic conditions as an environmental-exposure problem and applies the tools he used against polluters — public-records requests, litigation, and sustained pressure on regulators — to food, chemical, and pharmaceutical policy.
Forced transparency out of federal and state health agencies through public-records litigation and suits over rulemaking and informed consent.
Put childhood chronic disease — allergies, asthma, autoimmunity, obesity, neurodevelopmental conditions — at the center of the national health conversation.
Campaigned against toxic exposures: industrial and pharmaceutical mercury, pesticides, PFAS and other “forever chemicals”, and additives in the American food supply.
Championed parental rights, informed consent, and a family's right to see the underlying data.
Challenged regulatory capture and conflicts of interest between agencies and the industries they oversee.
Built a large independent newsroom and publishing arm so families could read the research themselves.
Organized parents in all 50 states and gave harmed families a lawyer, a platform, and a hearing.
Founded
2016
Founded
Years as chairman
7
Years as chairman
States organized
50
States organized
Children's Health Defense is an anti-vaccine advocacy organization, and its central claims about vaccine safety — including a link between vaccines and autism — are rejected by the CDC, the WHO, and the mainstream medical research consensus. Members of the Kennedy family have publicly criticized the group's work.
“Chronic disease, food policy, and what's on the American plate.”
Minutes after Kennedy was sworn in as Secretary of Health and Human Services on February 13, 2025, Executive Order 14211 created the Make America Healthy Again Commission with Kennedy as its chair. MAHA is the movement's name for its central argument: that America's chronic-disease burden — especially in children — is driven by what the country eats, drinks, breathes, and is prescribed. A separate 501(c)(4), MAHA Action, carries the same agenda into electoral advocacy.
Executive Order 14211 directed the Commission to investigate the incidence and causes of chronic childhood disease.
Produced the MAHA report on childhood chronic illness, ultra-processed food, and environmental exposures.
Pushed food-system changes at HHS, from synthetic dyes and additives to federal nutrition guidance.
MAHA Action organizes around real food, agency accountability, and a medical system designed to heal.
Est. by executive order
2025
Est. by executive order
Founding document
EO 14211
Founding document
Core issue areas
5
Core issue areas
The Commission's work and its recommendations on vaccines and pharmaceuticals are contested by major medical and public-health organizations.
In June 1999 a few dozen Riverkeepers gathered in Southampton, Long Island, and turned a scattering of local patrols into a single global movement. Kennedy served as president for two decades, overseeing its legal, membership, policy, and fundraising programs, and the model he built on the Hudson — a paid, full-time advocate for one body of water, backed by lawyers — is now the standard for waterway defense on six continents.
Grew into the umbrella group for 344 licensed Waterkeeper programs across 44 countries.
Launched the 2001 “Clean Coal is a Deadly Lie” campaign, bringing dozens of suits over mountaintop removal, slurry ponds, mercury emissions, and coal ash.
Waged a decade-long legal and public campaign against factory-farm pollution in North Carolina, Oklahoma, Maryland, and Iowa.
Organized national summits with independent family farmers harmed by industrial meat operations.
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