1. RFK Jr. to Congress: ‘I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me’

Washington Post

“His job description is the nation’s chief health strategist,” said American Public Health Association head Georges C. Benjamin. Kennedy is “constantly giving people advice,” Benjamin said, but it’s “bad advice,” referring to the health secretary’s promotion of treatments for measles that are not evidence-based.

2. RFK Jr. clashes with lawmakers over vaccines and HHS mass layoffs

NBC News

Public health experts also pushed back on Kennedy’s responses about vaccines. While Kennedy has no medical training, “the problem is that the top line of his job description is the nation’s chief health strategist,” Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said during a call with reporters Wednesday. “His job is to give people the best advice that he can.”

3. RFK Jr. says people should not take medical advice from him, defends HHS cuts during congressional hearings

ABC News

"The problem is that is his job — the top line of his job description — is the nation's chief health strategist. That is the top line of every health official, federal, state, local leader. That is his job, is to give people the best advice that he can. I believe that he's giving up on, in my view, his chief responsibility," Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told reporters on a call in which he and other health leaders responded to Kennedy's testimony in front of the House Appropriations Committee.

Benjamin pointed out that Kennedy has, in fact, seemed to advise people on how to treat measles, leading them toward unproven remedies.

4. Amid protests and Democratic pushback, House GOP begins work on Medicaid cuts

Maryland Matters

American Public Health Association Executive Director Georges Benjamin wrote in a statement that House Republicans’ planned overhaul of Medicaid “does nothing to improve public health.”

“Instead, it would undermine much of the progress we have made to expand access to affordable, quality health insurance and implement other evidence-based measures to protect the public’s health,” Benjamin wrote. “We urge the House to reject this bill and instead work in a bipartisan manner on legislation to improve public health and expand access to health care for all Americans.”

5. Confronting the 2025 vaccination crisis: Expert physician panel discusses the way forward

Medical Economics

“We've had a lack of consistent, coherent messaging. It's all right to get your measles shot, but maybe not. This lack of coherent messaging means that we've learned nothing about risk communication, about the importance of consistent messaging that's evidence-based…”

6. Americans still don’t know how and when to wash their hands

CNN

Or the trend could be caused by a longer lifetime of habits, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, who wasn’t involved in the research…“Older folks, we didn’t have the hand sanitizers when we were younger,” Benjamin said. “When I went outside to play, when I came back in, I was supposed to wash my hands. So I think that you’re looking at behaviors that may have changed from a generation to another generation.”

“However, other germs — like those that cause colds, norovirus, and other infectious diseases — can spread throughout the year,” according to the survey. “It is important to maintain proper hand hygiene all year round to help stay healthy.”

7. How federal vaccine skepticism could affect public health, pharma industry

Healthcare Brew

“The data is clear: Vaccines do not cause autism. This is based on years of study, scrutiny, repetition of very sound science,” American Public Health Association Associate Executive Director Susan Polan told Healthcare Brew in a statement. “Bringing a discredited researcher to lead a study with the expectation that there will be evidence-based and unbiased conclusions by September is ludicrous.”

“It’s fair and at times responsible for people to ask questions, and I think it’s equally as important for those questions to be answered with facts, not fear,” she said. “We’re seeing misinformation has real-world consequences” and a “resurgence of preventable diseases.”