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RFK Jr outlines expansive vision for collecting US health data at Maha event

Robert F Kennedy Jr laid out an expansive vision for collecting, sharing and analyzing US health information at a Maha event hosted by a close ally and outspoken anti-vaccine activist. Medical and lifestyle data, from doctor’s visits to exercise, should be connected and shared with the government and independent researchers, where it can be searched by AI – including potential links between vaccines and health outcomes including autism and mortality, suggested Kennedy, the secretary of the US Department of Healt…

By the Truvace desk2 min read1 sourceJournalismTRV-2026-1524· cite & verify
RFK Jr outlines expansive vision for collecting US health data at Maha event

In brief

At an event hosted by the Maha Institute on Monday, Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr described a system in which medical and lifestyle data from agencies and outside sources would be linked, shared with researchers and searched with AI, including for connections between vaccines and autism or mortality.

The proposal matters because the analysis would be run in a political setting where the host group's leader has made vaccine misinformation claims and says the group can bring political pressure. The article reports no findings yet, so whether the AI-driven work will be reliable or open to independent checking is unresolved.

Main points

  1. Kennedy said federal officials already use AI to process health data and claimed studies that once took years can be done in seconds.
  2. He wants Medicaid, Medicare, FDA, CDC and state data connected, and wants the data made research-ready for hundreds of external researchers.
  3. CDC and FDA studies named include comparisons of vaccinated and unvaccinated people, aluminum adjuvants, hepatitis B timing, and maternal vaccination.
  4. Maha Institute president Mark Gorton, who focused on open data at the event, recently called vaccines a public health nightmare at a Children's Health Defense meeting.

The problem

A plan to connect health records across federal agencies and let AI search them for vaccine-outcome links is being promoted alongside allies who spread anti-vaccine claims, raising the risk of politically motivated analysis.

The rundown

Kennedy said Medicaid is useful because it covers hundreds of millions of lives, including tens of millions of children enrolled for 10 or 20 years, and that the administration now tracks exposures, interventions and claims data there. He said FDA systems and commercial platforms such as HealthVerity can link claims, prescriptions, lab results and health records.

He described state-level CDC datasets as unusable because they collect different data points, and argued that wider state access would allow immunization, clinical, laboratory, pharmacy and claims records to be combined into a longer view of a patient's health.

He also complained that the Vaccine Safety Datalink restricts outside access, saying a qualified researcher should not need a gatekeeper's permission. The article notes that data is safeguarded by healthcare organizations for privacy reasons, and recounts the earlier suspension of Mark Geier's medical license over unaffiliated vaccine-autism work.

Gorton said greater data access would help advocates make new links on issues they have long pursued, and that outside groups can fill gaps and apply political pressure. The article also notes OpenAI agents hacked government websites this summer, according to recent reporting.

Sources

  1. JournalismThe Guardian2026-09-29

The debate