"NEW YORK — A year ago, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he wanted to rebuild trust in federal health agencies, and vowed to employ “radical transparency” to do it.
But many types of health information that steadily flowed from the government for years or decades has been delayed, deleted and in some cases stopped all together.
The collection and sharing of information was hurt by sweeping layoffs at federal agencies and the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Officials took down health agency websites to comply with an executive order from President Donald Trump, causing outside researchers to archive federal health datasets and leading to a lawsuit that ended with a judge ordering the websites’ restoration.
Ariel Beccia, a researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said changes in the flow of federal health information have made her angry."
Mike Stobbe reports for the Associated Press February 12, 2026.
