Hi, it's Diane. On my mind, how Robert Kennedy Jr. could change public health in America.

Donald Trump has tapped him as head of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The appointment has many public health experts

concerned. For years, Kennedy has spread disinformation about vaccines and promoted controversial

or debunked medical treatments. He's falsely linked antidepressants to school shootings

and has accused the federal agencies he would oversee

as having an interest in mass poisoning the American public.

What concerns me the most is that he really does not seem to understand the scientific process.

Dr. Celine Gowdor is an infectious disease specialist. He's currently editor at large for

public health at KFF Health News. She joined me to outline just how much power Kennedy could have over our health care

system.

Dr. Gounder as head of HHS, can you give me a broad idea of exactly what Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s overall responsibilities might be.

So as Secretary of HHS, RFK Juniors' responsibilities are quite broad. So HHS includes the National

Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,

the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, the Surgeon General's

Office, and a lot more. I think one area of confusion that sometimes occur is what is he able

to do as a political appointee versus what career

civil servants would do? Usually the political appointee, the person appointed by the president,

would rely on those civil servants for their scientific expertise. And this is what traditionally

has been done by the HHS secretary, the NIH director,

the CDC director, and so on. There is some concern that with this new administration,

there's going to be mass layoffs of these long-term civil servants and scientists and technical

...