By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-09-29 20:56:55 | Updated at 2026-09-30 01:22:56
5 hours ago
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Dallas, Texas, on September 10, 2026. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
American health data is useful in the effort to figure out the causes of diseases, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has previously promoted wearable technology, said in a speech at a Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) summit on Sept. 28.
Kennedy said that data is essential for the mission of ending what he and some others describe as the chronic disease epidemic in the country.
One point is putting Americans in control of their own health data, by enabling access via cell phones to easily share with doctors, applications, and artificial intelligence, Kennedy said.
“Second, we need to put American health data to work to answer the most important question that is in front of us today, [which] is: why are Americans so sick?” Kennedy continued.
“We need to use America’s health data to determine whether the food we eat, the chemicals we encounter, the vaccines that we’re administered, the other environmental and lifestyle exposures are contributing in one way or another to the chronic disease epidemic. The same data that gives Americans control over their health can help us understand the health for 340 million Americans.”
The summit was held in Washington by the MAHA Institute, whose officials support Kennedy.
Mark Gorton, the institute’s president, spoke before Kennedy and said that modernizing America’s health data systems is important because patients struggle to access their health records, doctors can sometimes experience difficulty accessing patient records, and federal officials struggle to monitor the performance of drugs and the health of the population.
Kennedy has previously promoted wearables such as fitness trackers as a way to gather health data, and regulators said in January that they would not regulate certain wearables and artificial intelligence tools.
U.S. health officials have also previously announced they are utilizing information from federal databases, such as Medicaid and Medicare databases, for various efforts, including the bid to determine what is causing autism.
Kennedy said Monday that preventing disease requires information, which patients can use to manage their health, doctors can use to identify risks, and researchers can use to identify the causes of chronic diseases such as diabetes.
Enormous amounts of laboratory results and other data are generated, but are often held in silos by parties such as hospitals, insurers, and the government, Kennedy said. He said that his agency, which includes the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health, is working to connect the various systems.
