Children’s Health Defense builds power base to outlast RFK Jr.

WASHINGTON — Children’s Health Defense, the vaccine-skeptical organization once led by now-health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is playing the long game. 

The group has more power in Washington than the group’s CEO, Mary Holland, imagined possible in her lifetime. In an interview with STAT, she said CHD plans to parlay that influence into permanent policy changes — upending the childhood vaccination schedule, reformulating the shots, and abolishing mandates to get them, among a host of goals —  that will outlast Kennedy’s tenure at the Department of Health and Human Services.

“We fully expect at some point there will be people in power who do not support our agenda,” she said. “And we want to do as much as we can in this arguably auspicious time to create the kind of public support that will see us through.”