ALI ROGIN: As the Trump administration reimagines public health through its Make America Healthy Again Movement, a new study paints a stark picture of the challenges facing this nation's kids.

American children's health has significantly worsened across several key indicators since 2007, according to a recent study published in JAMA.

I recently spoke to Dr. Christopher Forrest, a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and one of the study's lead authors.

Dr. Forrest, thank you so much for joining us.

I want to read some top line numbers from your study.

A child was 15 to 20 percent likelier to develop a chronic condition in 2023 than in 2011.

Obesity rates rose from 17 to 20 percent among children between 2007 and 2023.

And rates of depression, anxiety, sleep apnea and autism have all increased.

What is the significance of children's health deteriorating across these metrics and more of them?

DR. CHRISTOPHER FORREST, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia: Our study actually evaluated 170 different health statistics.

Death rates of disease, distress.

And the significance is that across all of those indicators.

There's been a decline in children's health over the last two decades.

That speaks to a generalized decline in the developmental ecosystem where kids are being raised, where they grow and where they live.

ALI ROGIN: What do we know about why this is happening?

CHRISTOPHER FORREST: So that is the big question, and it's a complex answer.

There is no single factor that's causing this generalized deterioration.

People like to point out that the food environment is not healthy or the kids are spending more time on social media.

But that's just the proximate set of causes.

There are also environmental causes that are important.

What's happening to families?

Families are experiencing a lot of stress.

What's happening in schools?

What's happening with school start time?

What's happening with the climate changes that's actually now having impacts on both acute and chronic conditions?

And then even deeper than that is the political economy of our nation that allows one in seven children to live in poverty.

And also the cultural values that don't place children at the forefront of what we view as important to our society.

ALI ROGIN: How do these statistics in the United States stack up against other wealthy first world countries?

CHRISTOPHER FORREST: So we compare the United States death rates specifically for children less than 20 years of age to 18 countries, largely in Europe and Asia.

These are other high income nations.

And in the 1960s and the 1970s, the death rates were exactly the same.

But about 1980, we started to see the death rates decline more rapidly in those comparator countries versus the United States.

And today children in the U.S. have 80 percent higher death rates than children in other countries, both babies as well as children ages 1 to 19.

ALI ROGIN: The results of your study reflect some of the same problems that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been talking about that his Make America Healthy Again movement has been highlighting.

What do you make of the approach so far that this HHS and the Trump administration writ large has been taking to children's health?

CHRISTOPHER FORREST: In May of this year, the administration published a report that characterized children's health as in crisis.

I completely agree with that diagnosis.

Children's health has been declining over the last 20 years.

So the fact that the administration came out with that very strong statement that we need to better understand why children's health is in decline, I felt was a welcome message.

However, the analysis, at least the analysis done so far, has been very superficial.

As I mentioned, it's not all about the food environment.

It's not all about the chemicals that kids may be exposed to.

There's much deeper things going on in our society in terms of how families are struggling to raise kids.

Our neighborhoods are sort of disengaging from raising kids communally and what's happening in our political economy.

So I welcome subsequent reports from the administration.

I hope they look at our article and begin to dig more deeply as to what are some of the deep causes of children's declining health.

ALI ROGIN: Dr. Christopher Forrest of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, thank you so much for breaking this down for us.

CHRISTOPHER FORREST: My pleasure.

Thanks for having me.