U.S. Senator Katie Britt Attends HHS Budget Hearing with Secretary Kennedy

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.) attended a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS) hearing to review the President's Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) budget request with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The Senator discussed her support for several priorities, including youth mental health research and the correlation between declining youth mental health and the rise of social media. Senator Britt also asked Secretary Kennedy about funding for Head Start programs to improve food quality for recipients.

Senator Britt commented on her conversation with President Trump's Surgeon General Nominee Casey Means on the adverse health effects that excessive screen time has on children and teens: "I enjoyed my conversation last week with Dr. Casey Means … And one of the things that I talked with her about was I told her I really appreciated her support of Stop the Scroll, just talking about the negative mental health effects on children … I think a lot of times we talk about the things that people know, whether it's bullying or sextortion or different things that are happening online. But one of the things I think that we miss, and I think that you have focused on, is the health effects and mental health effects that occur from things like lack of vitamin D … because of the lack of outside exposure when you have children that are … on devices about 7.5 hours a day …

"When you're looking at social media too, the diminishing of real-world socializing skills and the ability to communicate with one another in person, higher rates of anxiety and depression and weaker physical and cognitive skills … I am deeply concerned about those effects … What targeted steps would you recommend, whether through congressional action or HHS guidance, school policies, parental empowerment, that we can do to reverse the trends that we're seeing in our children right now?"

Secretary Kennedy responded, "We have a MAHA agenda for the states and we're asking them to pass a retinue of laws that protect children … One of the primary ones in now 50% of the states have adopted it is bell-to-bell legislation so that in high schools and public schools that the cellphones are left in the backpack, and the, the transformation of those schools … is transformative … The testing scores for this school have gone up. The disciplinary problems have gone down. The parents love it. They say the kids are now learning to drive. They're driving without using their cellphones. They're coming home and eating dinner with the family without being on the cellphone the whole time."

Senator Britt also asked the Secretary about her continued support for the Head Start program: "Nearly 14 million children in the United States live in food insecure households, and roughly 1 in 5 children may not have consistent access to enough food. Head Start plays a critical role in providing nutritious meals to low-income children during their most important developmental years. Given the scale of child hunger, what specific steps is the Department taken to strengthen and expand Head Start Nutrition Services, and do you believe the current level of funding is sufficient to meet those needs?"

Secretary Kennedy highlighted the work that HHS has done to improve the quality of the food in Head Start programs: "There are 660,000 kids in Head Start, the poorest kids in our country. It's impact on them is demonstrable. It's been shown in study after study. This year, I've toured a lot of Head Start facilities since coming into office and the food was appalling. It was all ultra processed food … In addition to maintaining the budget at 2025 levels … and 2026 levels now, for a new budget, we gave $62 million to Head Start as a one-time investment to make sure that they can build kitchens, that they can build home gardens, that they can develop the infrastructure for feeding the children right. And we're requiring them now to provide nutritious food, fresh food for their children."

You can watch the Senator's full remarks here.

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