A member of RFK Jr.'s MAHA movement and a public health expert met on Zoom. Here's what happened next.
'These are two groups that talk a lot about each other,' said Adhikari, who has worked for ABC News and the podcast 'The Problem with Jon Stewart.' 'I just don't see a lot of spaces where they talk to each other or with each other.'
The conversations are captured on Adhikari's weekly podcast, '
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Despite the high stakes, the goal wasn't to change anyone's mind, said Adhikari, who lives in Brooklyn. She hoped both sides would discover shared concerns and better understand their opponents' perspectives. Those common worries included the risks of corporate influence in science and medicine, the possible harms Medicaid cuts could cause, and the safety of Americans' food.
'I didn't expect the areas of agreement would be so obvious that we would actually find spaces to work together almost immediately,' said Megan Ranney, dean of the Yale School of Public Health, who participated in the conversations.
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Though
'We really came into this feeling ostracized,' said Elizabeth Frost, a panelist who led Kennedy's Ohio presidential campaign operation. 'What really surprised me is a lot of people in public health feel the same way.'
The two groups, five MAHA representatives and the same number of public health experts, met twice in May.
A third conversation involved a few of the same panelists, plus MAHA representatives from Georgia.
Some meetings took on the tenor of estranged family members working to heal rifts.
MAHA is grounded in a deep skepticism of establishment medicine. Many gravitated toward the movement after feeling
let down by doctors they had trusted. Public health experts derive their knowledge from establishment medicine: They rely on hard-won data and the scientific method for their conclusions. One side feels ignored or dismissed. The other is frustrated and dismayed by how little sway scientific evidence and expertise hold with some MAHA adherents.
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'Scientists try their best to be open-minded, and ... we push and test each other to make sure that we're coming up with new ideas and using the best methods possible and getting as close to truth as we can,' Ranney said during the podcast. She then asked Frost, 'What would help folks to feel like science was being done with and for them?'
'There was a lot of outrage for having any questions about the way that the COVID pandemic was handled,' Frost responded. 'People on the MAHA side of it felt very demonized and very othered, that they weren't allowed to be a part of the conversation.'
The MAHA movement coalesced around Kennedy's presidential campaign last year, though it adopted its name only after he suspended his campaign for president and endorsedTrump
and his Make American Great Again movement. MAHA emphasizes personal choice in health, with a focus on addressing chronic illness, food quality, and distrust of the pharmaceutical industry. It also is associated with opposing longstanding, and well-proven, public health cornerstones, including the importance of widespread vaccination and water fluoridation to improve dental health. It's proven to have surprising appeal to members of both political parties, drawing liberals, MAGA Republicans, and independents, said Frost. As a result, members' beliefs are highly heterodox. Antivax sentiments are far from uniform, and dissatisfaction with overall policies in the Trump administration isn't unusual.
Mark Harris, another Ohio MAHA leader, described himself as an independent thinker. He disapproves of proposed deep cuts to Medicaid and was among the first in his friend group to recognize how serious COVID would be. He did take the COVID-19 vaccine, he said.
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'I do believe in herd immunity,' he said in an interview. 'I believe in vaccines being very helpful in achieving that.'
He emphasized during one of the podcasts, though, that the word vaccine implies permanent protection against an illness, and seems like a misnomer when applied to the COVID shots. COVID shots reliably offer long-term protection against serious illness and death but don't keep the virus entirely at bay over more than a few months.
'I completely agree with you,' said Paul Offit, one of the nation's most prominent vaccine experts and a member of the Food and Drug Administration's Vaccine Advisory Committee. 'Very early we should have made that very clear what the vaccine can and can't do.'
The two sides also generally agree on why so many Americans have lost faith in the medical establishment. Access is expensive and difficult. Insurance coverage can appear arbitrary and confusing. Interactions with physicians are often through overcrowded emergency departments or with harried primary care physicians with barely the time to spend 10 minutes with a patient. Public health officials are not often visible, trusted figures in a community until an emergency arrives, leaving them with limited credibility, noted Craig Spencer, associate professor of the practice of health services, policy and practice at Brown University.
Many public health officials wish scientific evidence spoke for itself, particularly when it comes to the power of vaccines. Polio is virtually unheard of in the United States. Measles was eliminated in this country before lower vaccination rates allowed it to resurface. The absence of these illnesses makes it hard for people who didn't live before widespread inoculation to fully believe in the value of vaccines, Spencer said, and data alone can't compete with a powerful messenger.
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People like Kennedy have stepped in to fill that communication gap. Many of his ideas aren't supported by science, Spencer said, but his ability to command an audience is enviable.
'They've done such an incredible job just being out there,' he said of MAHA leaders and influencers. 'Even if they're saying some things, a lot of things that I wouldn't agree with, they're out there and that is instilling trust."
During the podcast, Frost described how angry she was that people with COVID had been denied ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Offit responded with a layman's explanation of the evidence that the drugs aren't effective against the virus and, in the case of hydroxychloroquine, may do harm. Yet in the interview Frost didn't sound especially convinced, saying she gives the most weight to what her physician recommends.
That wasn't evidence of the podcast's failure, Adhikari said.
'That you're going to sit down with someone whom you've never met and act as though you could say something to them within a two hour conversation that will completely change something that is a deep-rooted value for them, it's just not reasonable,' she said. 'What I am trying to do is to build the bridge, to trust each other enough to even be at the same table.'
Jason Laughlin can be reached at
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