RFK’s push towards Making America Healthy Again, but what’s the impact on our portfolios?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as head of Health and Human Services, has made sweeping policy changes that are reaching far beyond the medical community. His moves on vaccines, nutrition, and regulatory structures are not just public health stories — they’re reshaping the outlook for investors in the healthcare and consumer sectors.

The White House’s Make Our Children Healthy Again: Assessment (MAHA Assessment), released on May 22, 2025, revealed key initiatives (1). The focus areas addressing underlying root causes of chronic illnesses in American children included elimination of processed foods and additives, addressing overmedicalization, environmental toxins, and lifestyle factors such as electronic use and lack of exercise.

September marked the deadline for RFK and his team to provide their recommendations to address the issues from the MAHA Assessment (2). The available strategy report lists action items in four key areas—advancing research, realigning incentives, fostering private sector collaboration, and increasing public awareness. Advancing research in a whole-person perspective, the strategy report aims to establish a gold standard in research. Goals include integrating improved technology in electronic health record-keeping (EHR) and wearables through artificial intelligence (AI) into Real World Data Platforms (RWDP) making data-collecting intentionally purposeful, useful, and accessible to researchers. Specific research areas include vaccine injury and efficacy, environmental contaminants (water/air/microplastics), oral health and microbiome, pediatric cancer, among others. Dietary focuses include updating the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, eliminating petroleum-based food dyes, defining and educating the public on ultra-processed foods (UPF), and tightening pharmaceutical and food marketing to children. A focus on food as medicine is another key initiative in MAHA with deregulation on small farming, regenerative agriculture, precision pesticide use, and clean food innovation.

Overall, several high-value, aspirational initiatives have been proposed. Researchers from healthcare and agriculture suggest many of the positions RFK and his team have put forth in the MAHA action plan come from unsubstantiated claims and, although admirable, the strategy to achieve these goals are poorly defined and would be difficult to implement (3).

But how does all this affect our portfolios? Let’s look at some possibilities:

Market Implications

Pharma & Biotech: Vaccine makers like Moderna, BioNTech, and Pfizer, among many others, face pressure with federal contracts canceled (4). Large, more diversified firms may weather the hit over their counterparts that specialize in mRNA products. Alternative investment opportunities could lie in the broader healthcare industry including preventative health, nutrition, and traditional vaccine applications. European and Asian companies may also take up the baton in mRNA research, potentially allowing for more exposure in the international biotech sector.

Food Industry: Processed food giants (PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz) could see margin erosion as regulations tighten. Mandates to eliminate certain ingredients including food dyes, seed oils, and/or synthetic chemicals will lead to reformulations of product recipes therefore increasing total costs. Clean-label and wellness brands, characterized by transparent, short-ingredient lists may see momentum gains. Examples include Whole Foods Market (owned by Amazon), Annie’s Homegrown (owned by General Mills), and Hain Celestial Group.

Healthcare & Insurance: A focus on vaccine policy may influence regulation, access, and/or consumer perception. Hospitals and diagnostics may benefit from greater acute-care demand. Alternatively, an emphasis on preventative and holistic care may increase pressure on insurance companies to cover items not historically reimbursable.

Agriculture & Nutrition: Precision agriculture, AI-driven health research, and food-as-medicine models could attract new investment flows. Top pesticide companies may face high-risk of being affected through increased litigation and decrease sales. Examples may include companies like Bayer and Syngenta which both use the pesticides glyphosate and atrazine, specifically noted in the MAHA report to cause chronic diseases (5)(6).

In the end, diversification remains KING. This applies not only to the portfolio as a whole, but also to an individual stock choice. The more diversified a company’s service or product is, the more it may be protected from market shifts.

Disclosure: Bergamot Asset Management LP and its affiliates do not offer legal, accounting or tax advice. The content herein is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as a solicitation.

References:

(1) Make Our Children Healthy Again. Assessment Report. The White House. May 22, 2025
(2) Make Our Children Healthy Again. Strategy Report. The White House. September 9, 2025
(3) Smith, R. Health care: RFK: Changing the playing field to notch some MAHA wins. Capital Alpha Partners. June 2, 2025
(4) HHS Winds Down mRNA Vaccine Development Under BARDA. US Department of Health and Human Services. August 5, 2025
(5) Bayer Crop Science. Accessed 9/3/25
(6) Syngenta-US. Accessed 9/3/25