Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is scheduled to deliver a keynote address this week at a conference for Children’s Health Defense (CHD) in Washington, D.C. CHD is an anti-vaccine advocacy organization he co-founded and previously led.
Both outlets report that Kennedy has spent the past year trying to distance himself from CHD, even as he remains linked to the group through his history. STAT notes that he has aimed to separate from the organization he once led, but is now appearing publicly at a CHD event. The Hill similarly describes the planned keynote while emphasizing Kennedy’s role as a former leader of CHD and his current position within HHS.
The accounts align on the core event and the timeline of Kennedy’s relationship to CHD, while differing mainly in how they frame his prior efforts to distance himself. Neither source indicates that the conference or keynote announcement changes CHD’s advocacy stance; it focuses instead on the apparent overlap between Kennedy’s current government role and his past leadership of the organization.
