Eleven Realistic and Action‑Ready Public Health Steps That Would Help Make America Healthy Again

We’re not sick because we lack science. We’re sick because we choose to focus on other things.

Our bodies are resilient. Our people are determined. But our systems are asleep.

In every ZIP code in this country, children are being poisoned by air no one filters, elders are forgetting names because no one checked their hearing, students are failing to retain what they just studied because no one taught them how to remember.

These are not mysteries. They are the consequences of choices. Or worse: the consequence of choosing not to choose.

If you’ve ever wondered what a real national health plan would look like—one that’s not reactive, not pharma-first, not buried in bureaucracy—here it is.

Eleven missions. All ready now. All backed by data. All waiting only for leadership. Let’s put MAHA to work.

Mission 1: Reclaim Cognitive Health—Restore Iodine to the American Diet

We beat iodine deficiency once. We let it return. Now, nearly 1 in 3 women of childbearing age has low iodine intake. And while her baby’s brain is developing, we’re playing catch-up (NHANES 2011–2014, PMC6073695).

What to do: Mandate iodized salt in processed food. Ensure prenatal vitamins contain ≥150 µg iodine (WHO). Monitor. Educate. Deploy. No excuses. See formulation with potassium below.

Mission 2: End the Sunlight Deficit—Make Vitamin D a National Baseline

It’s not about rickets anymore. It’s about depression, immunity, fracture risk, resilience. Yet millions of Americans live under glass ceilings—deficient, fatigued, and inflamed (Micronutrient Inadequacies in the US Population).

What to do: Fortify food staples. Screen high-risk groups. Recommend sun exposure by skin type. Supplement where needed (Yao et al. 2019 JAMA Netw Open).

Mission 3: Clean the Air We Breathe—Every School, Every Office, Every Day

We regulate water. We pasteurize milk. But we don’t monitor the air our children breathe? At CO₂ levels over 1,000 ppm, cognitive function drops (Allen et al. 2016).

What to do: Install CO₂ monitors. Require minimum equivalent air changes. Fund HVAC retrofits with real-time verification. If we can filter air on planes, we can filter it in 3rd grade.

Mission 4: Install the Invisible Shield—Far-UVC in Public Spaces

We know how to neutralize airborne viruses in real time: filtered far‑UVC light at 222 nm. It kills pathogens. It’s reported to be safe for people (Buonanno et al. 2020 Nature Sci Rep), but motion-sensor devices can kick on when rooms are empty on a schedule (e.g., 3AM-5AM). We know the benefits; we’re just not using it.

What to do: Certify filtered lamps. Deploy them in schools, hospitals, buses. Monitor indoor chemistry. Create incentives for builders and municipalities. This is pandemic prevention—before the next one hits.

Mission 5: Listen Before They Forget—Catch Hearing Loss Early

Hearing loss is the #1 modifiable risk factor for dementia (Livingston et al. 2020 Lancet). But most older Americans don’t get screened, and most who need hearing aids don’t have them. In the ACHIEVE RCT, hearing intervention slowed cognitive decline by ~48% in high-risk participants (Achieve Study).

What to do: Add hearing tests to Medicare annual visits. Cover devices and training. Educate families. Track cognitive outcomes. Restore the soundscape of aging.

Mission 6: Prescribe Strength—Muscle is Medicine

We’ve told people to walk. But muscle is what keeps people out of nursing homes. It prevents diabetes. It fights inflammation. It keeps the immune system alert (Saeidifard et al. 2019 Br J Sports Med).

What to do: Train doctors that muscle is not a secondary outcome. Make strength training part of every primary care plan. Subsidize access to equipment and instruction. Update guidelines to treat resistance training as essential.

Mission 7: Declare War on Ultra-Processed Food

This isn’t about sugar or fat. It’s about food that’s been denatured—restructured, emulsified, preserved, and flavor-enhanced beyond recognition. The data are clear: more UPF, more death (Srour et al. 2019 BMJ).

What to do: Label processing levels on packaging. Ban UPFs in public school cafeterias. Shift procurement standards for prisons, hospitals, and SNAP. If we wouldn’t serve it to our troops, why serve it to our children?

Mission 8: Augment Table Salt—Cut Stroke Risk with One Simple Switch

A 25% substitution of potassium salt for sodium chloride reduces stroke, heart attack, and all-cause mortality—without serious side effects when CKD is screened. This has been confirmed in the 21,000-participant SSaSS trial (Neal et al. 2021 NEJM).

What to do: Supply potassium-enriched salt for public kitchens. Educate clinicians. Mandate potassium salts as the default in foodservice. This is the lowest-cost lives-saved-per-dollar lever in nutrition.

Mission 9: Eliminate Lead in Aviation Fuel—Finally

Unleaded car gas was banned decades ago. But general aviation planes still run on leaded fuel. And children downwind of small airports have elevated blood lead levels (Miranda et al. 2011 EHP).

What to do: Ban leaded avgas. Transition to unleaded alternatives (G100UL exists). Test children near airports. Remediate soil. The lead story isn’t over. Let’s finish it.

Mission 10: Give Kids Back the Sun—Stop the Myopia Epidemic

Children’s eyes are elongating. Myopia rates are exploding. The reason? Indoor childhoods. The fix is free: light. Outdoor exposure of ~40 minutes/day reduces risk by up to 30% (He et al. 2015 JAMA).

What to do: Build daylight into school schedules. Create light-rich classrooms and recess yards. Use lux meters for compliance. Your school doesn’t need a new program—it needs sunlight.

Mission 11: Teach for Retention—Not for Exposure

The brain learns by retrieval. Not by rereading. Not by passively watching. Yet most schools reward exposure, not recall. The testing effect is among the most replicated findings in cognitive psychology (Roediger & Butler 2011 Trends Cogn Sci).

What to do: Restructure homework around low-stakes quizzes. Implement spaced retrieval schedules. Train teachers to write questions that matter. Every child should know how to learn—and remember.

This Is Not an Agenda. It’s a Rescue Mission.

These aren’t moonshots. They’re overdue course corrections. And they do something our health system has failed at for decades: they treat baselines.

Not drugs after diagnosis. Not treatment after dysfunction. But public, scalable, structural corrections—so Americans don’t fall sick in the first place.

If we act now, we can:

• Reduce all-cause mortality through salt reformulation.

• Reduce dementia risk through hearing intervention.

• Improve school performance via clean air and light.

• Add IQ points and reduce thyroid disease via micronutrient restoration.

• Shorten hospitalizations and prevent deaths with far-UVC.

• Shift the metabolic trajectory of millions through food standards.

These are not theory. They are knowns. We do not yet appreciate the importance of deploying them.

Closing the Gap Between Science and Sovereignty

Every single one of these missions is supported by real-world data, randomized trials, cohort evidence, or mechanistic convergence. None of them require new molecules, massive behavior change, or cultural war.

They require only this: to act on what we already know.

That’s what mission-ready public health looks like. That’s what making America healthy again actually means.