Ruth Padel

The Administration for a Healthy America (AHA) is a planned operating agency within the U.S. Public Health Service in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to be created as part of the HHS reorganization of 2025 under the administration of President Donald Trump. Its creation was announced on March 27, 2025, and is planned to be established through the consolidation of multiple existing public health agencies.

The consolidation has a stated goal of improving efficiency and reducing redundancy within HHS, and is intended to improve coordination among similar programs and streamline the delivery of services, particularly for low-income populations. As of March 2025, the Administration for a Healthy America is in the early stages of implementation, and the long-term operational structure and leadership of the agency have not yet been finalized.

The creation of the Administration for a Healthy America and the broader HHS restructuring have drawn criticism from public health experts, former officials, labor unions and Democratic lawmakers.^[1]

AHA's programs are planned to be aligned into several divisions.^[2][3] The Trump Administration's presidential budget request for fiscal year 2026 proposes the following functions for each division, most of which are transferred from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) or Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), or non-infectious disease programs of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).^[4][5]

• Primary Care: consolidating functions from the HRSA Bureau of Primary Health Care, Healthcare Systems Bureau, Federal Office of Rural Health Policy, and Office for the Advancement of Telehealth; CDC National Center for Injury Prevention and Control; OASH Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion and Office of Minority Health; and anti-doping programs transferred from the Office of National Drug Control Policy
• Environmental Health: consolidating functions from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the Safe Water Program from the CDC National Center for Environmental Health, and NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
• HIV/AIDS: consolidating functions from the HRSA Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, OASH Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy, and CDC's HIV/AIDS prevention and policy functions
• Maternal and Child Health: consolidating functions from the HRSA Maternal and Child Health Bureau, CDC National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, and OASH Office on Women's Health
• Mental and Behavioral Health: most functions from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and drug-free communities programs transferred from the Office of National Drug Control Policy
• Health Workforce: functions from the HRSA Bureau of Health Workforce
• Policy, Research, and Oversight: consolidating the Office of the Surgeon General from OASH, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and Covered Countermeasure Process Fund from the HRSA Healthcare Systems Bureau, the Alzheimer's Disease Program from the CDC National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, lead poisoning programs from the CDC National Center for Environmental Health, and data collection and public awareness functions transferred from SAMHSA

Some of these proposals can be implemented through administrative regulations directly instituted by the HHS Secretary through the federal rulemaking process, while others require Congress to pass legislation amending existing authorization bills.^[6][7]

The creation of the AHA was part of a broader restructuring of HHS in response to Executive Order 14210, "Implementing the President's 'Department of Government Efficiency' Cost Efficiency Initiative". The plan was announced by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on March 27, 2025, and included significant organizational changes, staff reductions and budgetary shifts across the department.^[8][2] The announcement made reference to the slogan "Make America Healthy Again", which was coined by Kennedy during his support of the Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign to echo Trump's own Make America Great Again slogan.^[8][9]

More details about the reorganization were contained in the Trump Administration's presidential budget request for fiscal year 2026, which was released on May 30, 2025.^[10]

Facilities of agencies to be merged into AHA

HRSA and SAMHSA headquarters at 5600 Fishers Lane in North Bethesda, Maryland

ATSDR headquarters at the CDC Chamblee Campus Building 107 in Chamblee, Georgia

NIOSH Taft Laboratory in Cincinnati, Ohio

The new agency is planned combine four existing HHS top-level agencies, and multiple components of another:^[8][2]

• The Health Resources and Services Administration was established in 1982 from merging the Health Resources Administration and the Health Services Administration, which themselves were created in 1973 at the end of the Public Health Service (PHS) reorganizations of 1966–1973 to consolidate a number of longstanding smaller divisions.^[11]
• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration was established in 1992 from splitting the treatment functions from the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and National Institute on Drug Abuse.^[12]
• The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health was established in 1967 as part of the 1966–1973 PHS reorganizations, when the position of the Assistant Secretary for Health was created and supplanted the Surgeon General as the head of the Public Health Service agencies.^{[13][14][15][16]}
• The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences was formed within the National Institutes of Health in 1966.^[17]

With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention planned to narrow its focus to infectious disease, several of its components focused on chronic and non-infectious disease are expected to be transferred into AHA:^[18]

• The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's earliest predecessor was formed in 1914, and became NIOSH in 1971 as a result of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.^[19] It was absorbed into CDC in 1973 at the end of the 1966–1973 PHS reorganizations.^[20]
• The National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) and National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion were two of the original centers established in 1980, when CDC first created internal centers.^[21] The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control was spun off from NCEH in 1992,^[22] and the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities was spun off from NCEH in 2001 due to the Children's Health Act of 2000.^[23][24]