BOSTON — Joe Kennedy III has “great memories” of growing up with his uncle, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But the younger Kennedy’s “grave concerns about the safety and integrity of our health system” have moved him to condemn his uncle’s leadership as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, he said at the STAT Summit in Boston on Thursday.
Those concerns prompted Kennedy, a former Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, to call on his uncle to resign last month. He elaborated on his thinking in his most extensive comments on his uncle since the elder Kennedy took office.
“For a family that’s grown up in public life, we all have our differences, as families will have. We have for generations done our best to keep those disagreements out of the spotlight,” Kennedy said onstage.
Now there are growing fractures within the family over the extraordinary tenure of a health secretary who has shared misinformation about the root causes of autism and enacted policies that restrict access to vaccines. Kerry Kennedy, one of the health secretary’s siblings, also said in a statement last month that he “must resign” because of the threat he poses to health care.
“Bobby’s a member of my family. I grew up with him, I grew up with his kids,” Joe Kennedy III said at Thursday’s event. “When we were together, we talked about plenty of other things that wasn’t public health policy, he obviously got into that late.”
That has made it hard for Kennedy to comment on his uncle’s motivations or the evolution of his beliefs on science and public health, he said. As for whether the elder Kennedy responded to his nephew’s call for him to step down, “I’m going to keep [that] between me and him.”
Joe Kennedy III is more vocal on his opposition to Trump administration policies like cutting $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next 10 years.
“You take health care away from people, people are going to die,” Kennedy said. “The hard part is when you hear, ‘we can’t afford it,’” he added, noting that President Trump’s spending priorities include plans for a $200 million makeover of the White House ballroom and a possible $40 million bailout for Argentina.
“Is that the urgency of this moment, that we’re going to build a bigger ballroom in the White House rather than provide fresh food for kids?”
The importance of food and nutrition when it comes to public health is one area where the two Kennedys share common ground.
“Trying to address the diet of Americans to have people eat fresher, healthier organic food, that’s great,” Kennedy said. “I wish [the HHS secretary] nothing but success.”
Critics have noted, however, that the Trump administration’s cuts to Americans’ nutrition benefits and farm-to-school programs run counter to the health secretary’s stated goals of expanding access to healthy foods.
Meanwhile, the elder Kennedy has also continued to aggressively reform federal health agencies, hollowing out entire departments through several rounds of layoffs and radically reshaping research funding.
Joe Kennedy III also highlighted the work of his nonprofit Groundwork Project, which supports community organizers in red states, saying it has opened his eyes to the problems of food access in areas like the Mississippi Delta.
Farms in that fertile region grow commodities like corn and soybeans, yet many people there live in food deserts without access to fresh fruits and vegetables. There’s a disconnect between these challenges as faced by “regular Americans” and the ways the Democratic party talks about health policy, Kennedy said, noting that “Democrats love white papers.”
“You don’t need a regression analysis to understand the fundamental problem of hunger,” Kennedy said. “Why, in the richest nation on earth, are we still struggling to make sure our babies can eat?”
If Democrats and the scientific establishment want to rebuild trust and counter the messaging and misinformation spread by an “unconventional president,” Kennedy said, the key is to “find the folks that are figuring out a way to raise kids and support them.”
“If you can have, for example, camps where kids are going to be able to go and get fresh fruits and vegetables and see a nurse and get trusted medical advice, if you can actually help create an ecosystem where health care and mental health can be delivered robustly,” that will turn the tides, Kennedy said.
“We’ve got to do a much better job of actually meeting people where they are, understanding what those concerns are and then translating them,” Kennedy added. “People are looking for answers.”
Daniel Payne contributed reporting to this story.
https://www.statnews.com/2025/10/17/joe-kennedy-splits-rfk-jr-grave-concerns-health-care/?utm_campaign=rss