Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

HHS will be funding innovation challenges.

The winner of the LymeX Healthathon Innovation Sprint, for example, will win up to $2 million for perhaps repurposing existing drugs for Lyme disease.

There's also a public education prize and an AI prize.

Lyme disease affects millions of Americans, and symptoms can linger for reasons that aren't always understood.

A National Academies of Science report published in 2025 points to a dearth of investment in Lyme treatment research.

The contest could help with that, but it's not clear whether they will result in clinical studies.

Kennedy says HHS will also work on combating alpha-gal syndrome, a meat allergy associated with tick bites.

Sydney Lupkin, NPR News.

First... They were screaming and begging to be let out.

Okay, okay.

Honey, honey, honey.

Bobby, please.

Bobby, Bobby, please.

The United States does not just face a mental health crisis.

We face a dependency crisis driven by over-medicalization.

We will no longer treat them as the default.

We will treat them as one option.

I absolutely will work with you on the PREDICT Act.

It's something that's very personally important to me to have more wastewater surveillance.

And we are also putting $325 million in this budget into a new bio-threat radar system that will integrate with the microbial surveillance wastewater treatment plant to detect pathogens as soon as they emerge in our country and elsewhere in the world.