RFK Jr. Will Convene a New Health Commission in Private

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose first month in office has been shadowed by a growing measles outbreak in West Texas, will convene the first meeting of President Trump’s Make America Healthy Again Commission in private on Tuesday afternoon, and will later meet with “MAHA moms” and other allies, according to several people with knowledge of the events.

The commission takes its name from the movement created by Mr. Kennedy, who will serve as chairman. Composed of cabinet secretaries and other top federal officials, the panel has the broad goal of “understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease,” according to an executive order signed by Mr. Trump on Feb. 13, hours after Mr. Kennedy was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in.

The group’s inaugural meeting will be at the White House complex, according to several people who will attend; it was not on Mr. Trump’s schedule, and it was not clear whether the president would attend. The agenda has not been made public.

Mr. Kennedy is perhaps best known as a vaccine skeptic; his management of the Texas measles outbreak has drawn scrutiny because he has promoted alternative treatments, including cod liver oil and vitamin A, while avoiding a full-throated endorsement of vaccination, which scientists and public health experts say is the most effective way to prevent the spread of the disease.

Two people have died of measles in recent weeks: a child in Texas and an adult in New Mexico. Both were unvaccinated. They were the first measles deaths in the United States in a decade.

Mr. Kennedy is also an ardent proponent of addressing what he calls the nation’s “chronic disease epidemic,” especially in children, and of ridding grocery stores of ultra-processed foods. On Monday, he instructed the Food and Drug Administration to explore ways to require food manufacturers to disclose more of their ingredients to federal regulators.

In some respects, those two strands of Mr. Kennedy’s advocacy are intertwined; he has repeatedly suggested, for instance, that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine causes autism, despite extensive research showing no link.

Mr. Trump’s executive order cites in particular rising rates of autism spectrum disorder, which according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now occurs in 1 out of 36 American children. The Department of Health and Human Services said last week that the C.D.C. would investigate a potential link between vaccines and autism.