RFK Jr.’s Health Department Is Pondering a National Men’s Health Initiative

The US Department of Health and Human Services is considering launching a federal men’s health initiative, a source at the agency tells WIRED.

Brian Christine, who will be sworn in on December 12 as assistant secretary for health at HHS and head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, called for such an effort Wednesday during a Food and Drug Administration panel on testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) for men. A spokesperson for HHS declined to comment.

“We have a men’s health crisis in this country. Now we need a national strategy,” he said as part of a call for creating so-called Men’s Health Centers of Excellence across the country that would collaborate with each other, share information, and generate data to inform policy and programs around men’s health.

Participants in Wednesday’s FDA panel—which included federal health officials, urologists, experts on male sexual health, and the CEO of a TRT pharmaceutical company—voiced support for expanding the eligibility criteria for TRT and removing testosterone from the FDA’s controlled substances list. Earlier this year, the FDA held a similar panel on hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women and announced in November that it would remove a black box warning from the medications.

The Trump administration has aggressively canceled equity and transgender initiatives across the government and cut hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for research into women’s and LGBTQ health.

During the panel discussion, Christine called attention to men’s health more broadly, pointing out the widening gender gap in life expectancy in the US and that 44 percent of men surveyed in 2023 didn’t get an annual physical. While rates of depression are similar among men and women, men are much less likely to seek treatment despite suicide rates in the US being much higher in men. Substance abuse compounds that problem, he said, with the majority of opioid overdoses occurring in men.

“There are fewer federal programs targeting men’s health concerns than women,” Christine said. “None of this suggests that we should back off our commitment to women’s health. No—never. But we do need a parallel track for men’s health in this country.”

Christine also couched men’s health concerns, particularly obesity, as a national security issue. “Men’s health concerns truly affect defense preparedness, defense readiness and the safety of this country against our enemies,” he said, adding that obesity is a barrier to serving in the military.