The article discusses World Health Day 2026’s theme, emphasizing the value of scientific collaboration to protect health across humans, animals, plants, and the environment. It notes a prolonged campaign promoting science and addresses concerns about political interference in science policy, using the immediate post-2024 US election period as context. The authors describe substantial perceived damage to the science-policy interface under the Trump administration, including shifts in control over appointments, advisory processes, data access, and funding rules. They connect these developments to tangible health risks, citing vaccine skepticism associated with outbreaks and mortality from measles as illustrative consequences. The piece situates these events within a broader warning about reducing evidence-informed public health due to political pressures. Where the article provides explicit claims about effects and governance changes, those are presented as described; it does not quantify the full scope of impacts or forecast future outcomes. If data are incomplete in the source, the summary notes uncertainty around broader causal links and long-term consequences.
The theme of World Health Day 2026, on 7 April, is “Together for health. Stand with science.”1 It marks the beginning of a year long campaign “celebrating the power of scientific collaboration to protect the health of people, animals, plants, and the planet.” This could not be more timely. In the immediate aftermath of the 2024 US presidential election, we warned that a second Trump administration would be a grave threat to evidence informed public health.2 But we, like many others, had no idea just how bad things would become.The damage to US science has been immense. The Trump administration has targeted the foundations of the science-policy interface, taking control of appointments, advisory processes, data access, and funding rules. The health consequences are already apparent, with the vaccine scepticism that has become an article of faith among the president’s acolytes contributing to outbreaks and some deaths from measles.3 Looking ahead,...