It’s election season, and we’re all awash in political ads, some dealing with issues like high grocery prices, others seeking to distract us from those issues. But one topic deserves voters’ attention, whether or not you see it in commercials: the impact that the upcoming elections will have on our health.

When the Trump administration took office, the U.S. led the world in public health innovations and initiatives that save millions of lives every year, like biomedical research and the monitoring and control of disease outbreaks to avoid epidemics. Institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, though imperfect, set the standard that other nations once strove to follow. The U.S. government was rightly seen as a go-to source for trustworthy health information.

And while too many Americans still lacked health coverage, most predominantly members of the Hispanic, Native American and American Indian and Alaska Native communities, the percentage of those who remained uninsured had dropped markedly over the last 15 years.

All of that progress is now being undone. Millions of Americans have lost or will soon be losing their coverage. Some of our pioneering, life-saving institutions have been so badly damaged that some epidemiologists say it will take decades to rebuild them. And people have rightly lost trust in the health information dispersed by federal officials, as medical mis- and disinformation have already led to many preventable deaths.

It’s no secret why trust has evaporated. President Donald Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., aggressively promotes falsehoods and has even directed the CDC to hide measles deaths. He’s pushed changes in federal vaccine recommendations that are so unscientific that leading medical organizations and state health departments have rejected them and issued their own guidance.

Now 30% of the CDC’s former staff have been let go or resigned, devastating the agency’s ability to monitor disease flare-ups like Ebola and hantavirus, as well as the recent cyclospora outbreak that sickened thousands with explosive diarrhea. The CDC lab that tracks food parasites lost eight of its 11 former staff, while the FDA’s food safety staff has also been cut.

Kennedy’s attacks have also hit lesser-known agencies, including the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which oversees disease screening such as mammograms and colonoscopies. Kennedy recently replaced its highly qualified members with his usual collection of cronies.

At the National Institutes of Health, abrupt funding cuts have disrupted hundreds of clinical trials involving tens of thousands of patients, including at least 118 cancer trials. Overall, Trump and Kennedy have cut research funding by 25%. They’ve repeatedly attacked studies on health disparities — like why rural patients die from treatable conditions at higher rates than people in urban or suburban areas, or why the risk of maternal death varies so dramatically by location, race and income.

This research, which once guided us in keeping Americans healthy, is being obliterated.

The new Congress we’ll soon elect could start repairing this wreckage, but only if we choose candidates who will protect the public’s health against politically motivated attacks. And for this to happen, we all need to take a hard look at the health-related records and statements of anyone asking for our votes this year.

And if we get a chance to speak directly to them at a campaign appearance or town hall, we need to ask: What will you do to stop the destruction of our public health system and ensure that health-appropriated funds actually get spent as Congress intended? How will you curb the flood of misinformation from Kennedy’s duplicitous Department of Health and Human Services?

This year, vote as though your health depends on it. Because it does.

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Bruce Mirken is a longtime writer and health advocate who serves on the coordinating committee of Defend Public Health. This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.

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