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Transcript of EWG podcast 'Ken Cook Is Having Another Episode'- Episode 47 JR Culpepper December 22, 2025 The longest U.S. government shutdown in history just ended and millions of Americans are about to pay for it. Health insurance premiums are set to double, SNAP food benefits were frozen for 42 million people and Democrats caved without securing protections for either.In today’s episode, Ken sits down with Liz Hamel, vice president and director of public opinion and survey research at health policy research organization KFF, about her groundbreaking research on the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement.A Washington Post/KFF poll reveals surprising contradictions: Most MAHA parents vaccinate their kids but trust Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccine information. These parents want more government regulation of food but support deregulating raw milk and they're more worried about fluoride than gun violence.As the government shutdown fallout continues and with basic health protections at risk, this conversation explores how divided Americans are over what they want for their children's health.____________________________________________________________________________Ken: Welcome to Ken Cook is having another episode, and before we dive in, I wanna give some context about why this conversation feels particularly urgent. Right now we're talking after all. About America's health. We just lived through the longest government shutdown in US History, 43 days, and it finally ended this week after a group of eight Senate Democrats voted with Republicans to reopen the government. Democrats failed to achieve their main objective of extending Affordable Care Act tax credits, which was supposed to be their bottom line, but one thing, the standoff made clear. The Affordable Care Act was an example of what Trump called Democrat programs, that he was willing to hold hostage and no Republicans were willing to break with him. Now without those extended subsidies, the average Affordable Care Act in Rollies annual Insurance Premium will jump about 114%. More than 20 million people benefit from these subsidies. Many face the prospect of either losing health coverage. We're seeing their costs double, but that's not all. During the shutdown, the Trump administration froze another Democrat program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or snap, formerly known as food stamps. This was the first interruption in SNAP benefits since the program began six decades ago, about 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP faced having their benefits delayed or not provided at all. The administration initially planned not to pay any SNAP benefits, but then said they would pay only 50% of normal benefits after a federal judge ruled the freeze was unlawful. That's still not all the administration even attempted to undo hundreds of millions of dollars in SNAP benefits that had already been issued to families. Let that sink in. So we had. Families with kids, most of which have workers in the household unable to afford food, and millions more about to lose health insurance or face skyrocketing premiums. Make America healthy again. They said, when we talk about the Maha movement and public attitudes toward public health, we're not just talking about processed foods, sugar, food, dyes, and other additives. We're talking about immediate health consequences from public policy decisions, and I represent an organization that works on processed food and food dies and additives, but even so, that is a small fraction of the real problems. My guest today is Liz Hamill, and I'm very excited because her organization KFF, has conducted a poll that shines some really important light on the Maha phenomenon. I haven't seen too many polls out there that tried to understand who is it that's adhering to Maha principles and what the partisan divide is, or how closely Maha followers adhere to the founder of the movement, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The disconnect between what parents say they want for their children's health and the political chaos that just left millions of Americans. Facing unaffordable health insurance couldn't be more stark. So Liz, welcome. Thank you for joining us. You've been in the polling business for 20 years. You're running the polling show there at KFF, and thank you for coming onto the program. Liz, can you say a little bit about the polling work that KFF does? Because I know you sometimes or maybe always co-publish with the Washington Post or other outlets. Say a little bit about the program and why it is so important for KFF to have polling as a central element to its work. Liz Hamel: Sure. And first of all, thank you so much for having me, and thanks for that great introduction. So KFF is really a unique organization. Uh, we're really focused on information, but we combine, as you said. Policy analysis, polling and journalism. And really the goal of all of those is we're, we're trying to fill the need for an independent, non-partisan source of information on national health issues. An important thing about KFF is that we really focus on how healthcare affects people. So my group that does the polling, we really do this in the most direct way. We're trying to amplify the voices of the public in national health policy debates. And the, one of the best ways to do that is to really ask the public, not only what do you think, what are your political views on policies, but what are you experiencing in the healthcare system, you know? And then increasingly we are also trying to find out. What is people's level of knowledge about different health issues? Yeah. Where maybe do people need to be educated more or where might gaps in information be affecting either their policy views or their health behaviors? So really the polling is a, is a critical piece of that puzzle of trying to fill the need for information on health issues. Ken: And my sense is that it's never been more important to find out where people are on the issues, where they get their information than it is now. When, particularly in, in the last few years, we've had post COVID or, and during COVID, uh, tremendous controversy over basic tenants of healthcare policy and public health policy, enormous controversies ranging from people defending vaccines. And I happen to be one of those people to people who feel in the spirit of medical freedom or health freedom, that they should make their own decisions and that they can't trust. Almost anyone in the medical profession or the public health world, and so that's a pretty rich. Set of questions to drop some polling into. Liz Hamel: Yeah, you know, it's always been a core part of our polling work to understand where people are getting health information and what they understand. But really we've seen sort of an acceleration in the need for that information. Starting with the pandemic. One of the things that prompted us to do this big survey of parents in partnership with the Washington Post. Some of the trends we've been seeing in our national polls in terms of declining trust in information coming out of government health agencies and increasing partisan divides in who is trusting the CDC and other sort of official sources of information.  Ken: And I've been reading your polls now for, for years, but especially, uh, the past two or three years, I'm concerned about the decline in. Trust in public health authorities and I come from an advocacy organization that has often challenged those public health authorities. And so one of the things that's interesting to me is the divide between the traditional public interest community, most of whom did not support Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For Health Secretary, including environmental working group, but I'm talking about A PHA and major environmental groups and so forth. No one was supporting. Him for this position. And yet we also have not really engaged a lot, at least on the environmental side, with some of these central questions involving authority around public health, like vaccine policy. So before we get into the poll, let me, let me just ask you, as someone who's attuned to public attitudes. When Make America Healthy again, came along as a theme before it became a movement. What was your take on that? What did you think was happening in The Body Politic that suddenly there was this enormous interest in Robert f Kennedy's candidacy as support for Trump and, uh, this notion of making America healthy again? I haven't found too many people opposed to making America healthy, but. Nonetheless, it seemed to light a real fire in people. What was your reaction?  Liz Hamel: Yeah, well, I, I mean, I think this actually will take us right into the poll results because what we found, which is also I think my reaction to how this movement is named. Is there is huge alignment between partisanship and in particular, support for the Make America Great Again movement. Yeah. Which is just only one letter different from the Make America Healthy Again  Ken: movement. Not an accident. Not an accident. I mean, I  Liz Hamel: don't have any insight into how that movement was named, but it does seem like that. Naming and the, and the sort of spirit of the movement is appealing to the same people that support the Make America Great again movement. Yeah. And so when we look at the poll results, we see this huge overlap between who identifies or who supports each of those movements.  Ken: That was one of the things that the poll helped clarify for me. I think sometimes the Maha movement, the Make America Healthy Again movement is characterized as a. Nonpartisan, almost a wedge issue that would pull lots of Democrats away and, uh, encourage them to, you know, support. If not just Republicans actually move into the MAGA camp. But that doesn't seem to really be what you found in your poll. Liz Hamel: No, and if we break it down to some of the things that Maha is trying to accomplish, there is broad support for, you know, decreasing the amount of sugar and the amount of processed foods and sort of increasing regulation of food quality. Those things are broadly popular across partisanship. But, uh, you know, where we see a lot bigger divides is on the question of vaccines and vaccine policy. Ken: Yeah. Talk about that a little bit. Because there was a lot of turmoil amongst Kennedy's followers because he left out vaccines when he first launched the Make America Healthy Again movement. It was all about, really all about food. And there's even been some stories now. There was a piece in the New Yorker not long ago where they reported that some of the leaders of Maha were congratulating one another for. Using food as a way to advance the profile of Kennedy. And he in turn, advanced Trump's election prospects without having to talk about vaccines. But your poll really shows a, a divide that we've seen for some time now, right on the partisan, uh, divide between who accepts and is trusting vaccine policy and who is not. And it's seems like a growing gap that more and more Republicans just don't trust.  Liz Hamel: Well, let me take a step back first 'cause I sort of skipped over describing this poll. So this was a, a survey of parents. So, you know, as I mentioned, we had been seeing a lot of trends in our general population polling, but really parents are the ones that are having to make decisions about vaccinating their kids. And so we wanted to go deeper. So we had a big sample of almost 3000 parents. We did the survey in partnership with the Washington Post, and a reason that we sometimes do our polls in partnership with a media partner like that is, you know, we're a really expert at breaking down the data, but the journalism in terms of interviewing some of those parents and telling the stories of the decisions that they make really sort of brings to life. The data in a different way. So I encourage your listeners to go check out the post. Great reporting on the poll as well. It was  Ken: terrific. A sample of 3000 is a big sample. That's a serious inquiry. And how did you go about asking the questions? Was it on the phone? Was it, yeah,  Liz Hamel: this particular survey, the interviews were all done online. Mm-hmm. But it was a probability base. Sample of parents. So we work really hard to make sure that we can have representative samples. We're not doing sort of quick and dirty pop-up ads. Join this poll, and we worked with Ipsos on this particular project. They have a panel of people who've agreed to take surveys, but they've been recruited using probability based sampling methods. And for people who are survey nerds and wanna learn a lot more, we have the full methodology on our website. We have the full questionnaire so you can see. All of the questions that we asked in the order that we asked them were really committed to transparency in terms of this work. And the poll was also conducted in English and Spanish as well. So that, you know, we really wanna try to reach as many people as possible to make sure we're representing different segments of parents.  Ken: So your top takeaway, uh, goes back to the, maybe the obvious appeal of any campaign that says, we want people to be healthy. So, four in 10 parents that you've interviewed, uh, identify as supporters of the Maha movement. That's impressive right there. I mean, there, there you have a lot of people thinking, you know, this is a good thing. It's, um, it's all about making people healthy, healthy eating. And then as you move into other issues, you see some important differences.  Liz Hamel: Yeah, and I mean, the poll was mainly about vaccines and so we do have a lot of detailed questions on that. Um, but when we look at who. Said they are supporters of the, of the MAHA movement, as you said, it was four in 10 parents overall, but if we look at people who support the MAGA movement, it was eight in 10 of them. Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, there's a big political alignment there, and that really stood out more than any other demographic differences. There were some differences by race, so white parents were more likely than black or Hispanic parents. To identify with the movement and people with fewer years of education were somewhat more likely, but it was really the political identity that was sort of the biggest correlate with support of the Maha movement. I will say we did not drill down to find out how many of these people are. Actively involved in say, organizing or volunteering for maha. So this is sort of a general level Yeah. Of support. And I think it may be different than if you looked at really who are the grassroots leaders of Maha. They may be quite different from Yeah. The people in the poll who said that they are supporters.  Ken: Yeah. Who's committed enough to, to make it part of their. Daily activities or, uh, engagement with, uh, policy issues, and then about one in six Democratic parents. Yeah. Were supporters of Maha. So it, it is quite a partisan divide.  Liz Hamel: Yes.  Ken: Now say a little bit more about. How you drill down on vaccine policy, because I, I found that really fascinating versus some, some other issues. There were divides across many of them over prescribing of medications. This is a concern of Maha. There was a big divide there, 61%. Of Maha parents versus 43% of non Maha neurodevelopmental disorders. You, you went through a whole range of them, and there was a divide between Maha versus non maha. What did you make of that?  Liz Hamel: Yeah, so we asked this question about what do you parents see as the biggest threats to children's health? And on some of them, you know, there was large agreement across the board. Social media really popped out for all groups as parents, seeing it as a big threat. To children's health. But when we look at people who are supporters of MAHA versus those who don't support the movement, we found Maha parents were more likely to say things like highly processed foods over-prescribing of medications, even neurodevelopmental disorders like autism. Mm-hmm. And then, you know, fluoride in water supplies was not a top concern across the board, but it was a bigger concern for Maha parents than non Maha parents. On the other side, the things that Maha parents were less likely than other parents to name as threats to children's health were things like gun violence, pollution. Food insecurity and infectious diseases. And so, you know, there's, there's a lot of agreement across parents. Yeah. But there are some areas where some issues are popping as more important to some parents than others.  Ken: The idea that, uh, gun violence would be left out of the Maha agenda. Is striking because it is what the, one of the top causes of mortality for children. Right. Gun violence.  Liz Hamel: Yeah. And, and again, I don't wanna say that we didn't find that No. Maha parents thought that that was important, but it was just a lower share than, yeah. Among parents. A lower share are not affiliated with Maha.  Ken: Yeah, no kidding. 68 non Maha. Think of it as a big issue in Maha, it's, uh, down to, down to 50%. So really interesting that there, there are these divides. The other thing that I found fascinating about your poll was when you looked at the Maha Commission's policy goals. With respect to regulating, uh, food in the US because during the campaign there were a lot of, uh, very ambitious promises or positions taken that we're not now necessarily seeing activated. Uh, now that, uh, the Trump administration is in, is in control and that Robert F. Kennedy Juniors at HHS. You know, questions about raw milk, which suddenly was on the radar this time last year. Out of all the issues, uh, advocacy for that, what do you make of the, of the health agenda and how it's reflected in terms of what is actually maybe getting done? Liz Hamel: Yeah, I mean, as I said earlier, we did find that there is broad support across parents for increasing government regulation on food dyes, on highly processed foods, sugar and foods. Raw milk was more divisive. It was not a majority supporting that. It was kind of split on that. In terms of removing government restrictions on the sale of raw milk, we don't see big partisan differences there. Right? And so across democratic parents, independent parents, Republican parents, in terms of regulating food dies and highly processed. What's really interesting there is that normally when we ask Republicans about adding or increasing government regulation, they are not supportive of it. So it is, it is kind of interesting that in this area of increasing government regulation on food, we actually find large majorities of Republicans in support, and that may be an effect of the Maha movement being so aligned with Republicans that we see higher levels than we might for other types of. Government regulation. You know, I think that is an interesting takeaway from that.  Ken: Yeah, I found that very interesting too. We, we've had some experience free Maha with trying to pass legislation in California to restrict food additives, food dies, and other substances, and it has been wildly bipartisan. When we've taken these things to the legislature, passed bills by large margins with bipartisan support. And this was in 2023 and 2024. And before the, the term Maha was, um, in the air, there has been this residual interest in and a sense that something's wrong with the food supply and we can do a better job that is. Not partisan. It's widely shared by parents. They kind of know this. They've absorbed it culturally to Maha's credit, to Kennedy's credit, he seized on it and it became a central organizing principle for everything that he promised to do. If, uh, Trump were elected and, and he had a position in the government. Liz Hamel: Yeah. You know, I mean we, we also found in our poll that when we ask parents about who they trust for information, say on vaccines. We found an interesting divide there between Maha parents and others where Secretary Kennedy was actually the number three most trusted source of vaccine information among Maha parents. And so, yeah, there is some some indication that things that he says and that he promotes are really gonna resonate with that group. He's more trusted among that group than. CDC, which is an agency that he, you know, now is in charge of. And so I think that his presence and his statements are something that this group is paying attention to. Ken: Yeah, it's having a real effect. And I worry about that from a public health standpoint, that his views have such weight with so many of his followers. But it's certainly the case, and we have seen this over many years now. When it comes to the partisan divide in getting vaccinated, even our acceptance of, uh. Vaccine mandates. Can you speak to that a little bit? Because that, I mean, we're talking about life and death now along a partisan divide, and it worries me. I have lots of friends who are Republicans. It's really worrisome that we are seeing this, this partisan divide, it seems to me, on vaccine. Acceptance and uptake and having your kids vaccinated. Liz Hamel: Yeah. I think it's important to emphasize some of the positive findings about vaccines that we had. Mm-hmm. This whole, yeah, for sure. This poll, because when it comes to the childhood vaccines, the ones that have been around for a long time, like the MMR vaccine, polio, those basic childhood vaccines. Most parents are supportive of them. Most have confidence that they're safe and they think they're important for children to get. So I think that point sometimes gets lost when we talk about, yeah, where there are some differences. When it comes to those childhood vaccines, the vast majority of parents across groups are getting their children vaccinated and see them as safe and think they're important. Ken: Regardless of what Kennedy is sort of saying, or his general position. I think that that is a vitally important part of this survey.  Liz Hamel: Yeah, yeah. And then when we look at parents' views of vaccines for flu and for COVID, so the seasonal vaccines. That's where we see a lot. Yeah. Lot bigger divides. We see, you know, parents who are skeptical of vaccines and parents who identify as Republicans. They're less likely to see those vaccines as important for children and more likely to question the safety of those vaccines for children. So that is where we're, we're seeing some divides, but then when we drill into some of the, the questioning right. The questioning of the vaccine schedule. So we had about four in 10 parents saying, well, they think kids are healthier if their shots get spaced out, indicating that maybe they don't wanna align with the current recommended schedule. About a quarter of parents say the CDC is recommending too many vaccines for kids. And about a third say they don't think vaccines go through enough safety testing. So. While we still have strong support and uptake of the childhood vaccines, we're seeing some more questioning attitudes. Yeah. And another thing that we saw in this poll was that younger parents, as compared to older parents, were also slightly more likely to say they're skipping or delaying vaccines for their kids. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And slightly more likely to express some of these vaccine skeptical attitudes. I think that's an important group to keep an eye on because it could indicate that we're sort of seeing a generational shift in terms of belief in vaccine safety and uptake of these childhood vaccines,  Ken: and unfortunately, the outcomes of that we may begin to see in the years ahead where there's a, a similar divide in health outcomes. You had a, a great figure two here on your survey is, is really interesting because it goes to questions of. Who you trust. And despite some of the rhetoric coming out of the administration, people still trust their pediatricians.  Liz Hamel: Yes. We find this in our general public surveys as well. Your own doctor or your child's pediatrician. When we ask about a list of, you know, different places you might trust for. Mm-hmm. Information about vaccines, information about COID. We've consistently found that individual pediatricians, individual doctors are the most trusted source for people. And I think that combined with the fact that we've seen declining trust in agencies like the CDC in your local public health department, your state health officials. It puts a lot more burden on those pediatricians, right? Because they're gonna have a lot more people looking to them for questions that they maybe could have had answered by some of these other sources that they're now not sure whether to trust anymore.  Ken: Yeah. And of course pediatricians are still relying on the CD, C, so there's kind of a cutout there, right? Where you want to go straight to your pediatrician and uh, you trust them as a source. For them. There's been a lot of alarm about changes at the CDC that might affect vaccine policy that eventually go to some of the questions like spacing out vaccinations, which a lot of pediatricians worry about because if you space them out sometimes that means kids don't come back and get them. Liz Hamel: Yeah, and I, I think pediatricians have other places to go besides the CDC. Yeah. And now, you know, one thing, this did not come from this survey of parents, but one of our more recent surveys. We asked about the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics and actually found that more people trust those organizations now than trust the CDC for vaccine information. So I think there is, yeah, an opportunity for professional associations for medical associations. To help fill those gaps, you know, unfortunately. Sure. It's not always as easy for the public to find the information. Yeah. From those organizations as it is from, you know, a big government agency.  Ken: So what is your sense from this poll and others, just how large the C experience looms over this set of attitudes now and views in the public with respect to specifically the CDC.  Liz Hamel: Yeah, I mean, I think it is a, it's hard to ignore the effects of some of the divisions that came about during the pandemic. We did our first poll where we asked people who they trusted for information about COVID in March, 2020. Mm-hmm. And at that point we had large majorities across partisanship saying that they trusted the CDC. And at that point we were asking about Dr. Anthony Fauci. As a source of information and large shares of Democrats, Republicans and independents we're trusting the CDC. We're trusting Anthony Fauci, right? That pretty quickly eroded as we tracked that throughout the pandemic, and you could see those partisan divides in trust emerging a few months after March, 2020, and really kind of growing. Over time. And you know, what was happening at that time was we were seeing a lot of partisan debates over how we should respond, right? In  Ken: very high profile, like national press conference in the Oval Office, et cetera, level, uh, very prominent, right?  Liz Hamel: Questioning whether people should get vaccinated divisions over vaccine mandates, divisions over mask mandates, to the point where wearing a mask, you know, in some places became sort of a statement about your political identity. And so. It has clearly bled over into parents and, and the public's views of vaccines for COVID. Yeah. But I think some of these cracks that we're seeing and the differences that we're seeing in trust and safety of childhood vaccines that I don't think we saw before. The pandemic.  Ken: Yeah.  Liz Hamel: There's no denying that there was some effect of that pandemic discussion on those attitudes. Ken: It's bleeding into other issues now of overall trust on these public agencies. And if they were suspect or you had concerns about them with regard to COVID, you might be more open to, uh, being suspicious or doubtful about their authority when it comes to other vaccines.  Liz Hamel: Yeah,  Ken: no question about it. Yeah. As a pollster now, as someone who's looking at public attitudes from a 30,000 feet, what do you think are the, the key. Questions for the public now about how we should. Make decisions about public health in this country because it seems like there's a divide there too. Almost two sets of decision making, uh, systems. One, the CDC, which is very much, uh, a different organization than it was just a few years ago, partly because of budget cuts and changes at the vaccine committee level. Uh, vaccine approval committee. Then you have states deciding they're going to pick up where, uh, the CDC, uh, is no longer taking action and banding together to set vaccine policy. Is this a permanent change in public attitudes? Uh, that is going to be hard to reverse? What are the key elements that make people feel like they're mistrustful of these government authorities? Now, and I, again, I say that as an organization that we have, you know, we. Pretty much challenge government institutions day in and day out in the environmental community. So it's not, it's not that. It's that we want the government to work better, not stop working.  Liz Hamel: Yeah.  Ken: That's the divide I'm kind of worried about now.  Liz Hamel: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think one thing, one thing we need to keep in mind when we're thinking about the general public is. They are not thinking about these things day in and day out like we are. And you know, we haven't talked about sort of the role of media and social media and, you know, we live in an age of information overload, right? And so. It's not like people have the time to go out there and say, oh, what does my state health office say? What does the CDC say? What does my pediatrician say? Like often they're, they're going to Google or AI now to sort of for their, or Facebook  Ken: or whatever. Yeah. Right,  Liz Hamel: right. And so I have a lot of empathy for the people who are trying to make health decisions in this environment. I think for those who really. Care about that. I think clear and concise communication that can reach people where they are. I mean, we often talk about the dangers of people finding information on social media, but I think. Health communicators really need to be on social media if they need to show up. Right. If they wanna, you know, reach people that they're trying to reach. And so I don't think anybody has an easy job here. And yeah, I wish I could say I knew anything about whether it's going to get easier or harder in the future.  Ken: Yeah.  Liz Hamel: But you know, I, I think these conversations are really useful. This is why at KFF, we really focused on how these policies impact people. Because I think it's easy to have this 30,000 foot discussion about a policy, but really thinking about like, how is that change gonna affect people and how are they gonna understand it and how are they gonna get information about it is really important. Ken: Yeah, absolutely. I just wanna ask one more question. It's a little bit, a little bit, uh, tangential, but it came up in your survey of attitudes. About public health programs like Medicare and Medicaid. What did you see in this survey or in previous surveys about public support for that? And is there a divide there? Maha non Maha.  Liz Hamel: We didn't ask about those programs in this poll of parents, but we certainly have been doing a lot of polling around Medicare and Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. I mean, certainly one of the biggest issues right now in health policy is the pending expiration of the premium tax credits, the enhanced premium tax credits under the A CA. In all of our polling, we find that a majority of the public across partisanship wants those to be extended. People are concerned about the looming increase in what people are gonna have to pay for their healthcare, you know, and yes, there are some partisan divisions. We've been tracking public opinion on the a CA since before it was passed, when it was being debated. And actually we've found it's only become more popular over time. You know, it is still very partisan when you ask about the Affordable Care Act as a law. But when you ask about a lot of the things that the Affordable Care Act did, those are popular across partisanship and so. You know, I think a lot of that stems from the fact that healthcare costs are a huge concern for people. Yeah. And anytime the government does something to try to help people with the cost of healthcare, it is, it is very popular. Now, there are some, you know, it is also very expensive for the government, and so there are divisions in terms of how much, you know, tax dollars should be put towards it. But in terms of public support. We always in our polling find high levels of public support for the government healthcare programs.  Ken: And so there we have this consistency where, you know, at the political level it might be hotly debated, but when you go down to just regular people, they want healthy food. They want healthy kids, they want fewer additives, you know, they want government health programs that are making it easier for them to keep their family healthy. Liz Hamel: Yeah. I mean, we always say that healthcare is a pocketbook issue for families. Yeah. They're trying to figure out how to afford food that is healthy, how to afford those doctor visits. Of course. You know, so it is, it is a really important issue that touches everybody's lives.  Ken: Well, Liz Hamill, thank you so much for spending time with us. Uh, this is a super important survey from my standpoint and, uh, I look forward to, um, you know, spreading the word, getting people informed about this. It, uh, raises lots of questions, but answers quite a few of them too. I came away kind of encouraged, I have to say, from reading the results of this survey, that parents still trusted their pediatricians despite all the attacks on pediatricians, uh, recently. Uh, and that, um, you know, this obviously the CDC has some work to do. I think it's gonna be hard to do that work just now to sort of redeem itself in the public eye. But I think all of us have a responsibility to speak to the science that the CDC represents. And, uh, in doing that, I hope we'll. Contribute to at least getting people to when they're doing their own research, at least they'll take the CDCs research into do consideration, which it certainly deserves. Liz Hamel: Great. Thanks for having me.  Ken: Thank you to Liz Hamill for joining us today, and thank all of you for listening. If you'd like to learn more, be sure to check out our show notes for additional links. For a deeper dive into today's discussion, make sure you follow our show on Instagram at Ken Cooks podcast. And if you're interested in learning more about ewg, head over to ewg.org or check out the ewg Instagram account at Environmental Working Group. Now, if this episode resonated with you or you think someone you know would benefit from it, send it along The best way to make positive changes to start as a community with your community. Today's episode was produced by the extraordinary Beth Row and Mary Kelly. Our show's theme music is Courtesy of Moby. Thank you, Moby. And thanks again to all of you out there for listening.  Areas of Focus Toxic Chemicals Press Contact JR Culpepper jr.culpepper@ewg.org (202) 779-9990 December 22, 2025

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