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Restoring American Wellness
America’s Current Health Paradigm is Unsustainable
Health is the foundation of strong families, safe communities, and a thriving nation. A nation in physical, mental, and spiritual decline cannot flourish. While America has led the way in prosperity and ingenuity, we have also seen a precipitous decline in health. Once rare illnesses are now common. These demand investigation, even when—especially when—that investigation threatens to upset consensus and conventional wisdom.
Transparency, nutritious food, and a healthcare system Americans can trust can lead to greater health sovereignty and reduced healthcare spending.
The Restoring American Wellness (RAW) initiative by The Heritage Foundation seeks to build and support a broad and effective coalition of Americans around an ambitious suite of policies to restore American health. This reckoning will challenge assumptions, threaten profitable enterprises, and force us to confront uncomfortable truths about choices we have made in the name of progress.
The stakes could not be higher. It’s time to restore a culture where health is possible, accessible, and supported at every level.
Our Areas of Focus
The Biomedical Security State: Unraveling government overreach, censorship, and failed public health policies
- Washington Must Protect Americans From Dangerous Biological Experiments, Robert Moffit & Robert Redfield (February 10, 2026)
- The Future of Biosafety: Confronting Gain-of-Function Research (Event, January 20, 2026)
- RFK Should Grill the Pill, Jennifer Galardi & Scott Yenor (October 29, 2025)
Learn more: Government Regulation
Drugs, Medical Research, and Practice: Challenging Big Pharma’s influence and restoring patient-centered medicine
- The MAHA Case for Advanced Genetic Editing, Emma Waters, (Jan 23, 2026)
- Senate Report Confirms the Wisdom of Secretary Kennedy’s Revised COVID-19 Vaccine Schedule, Robert Moffit (June 9, 2025)
- Restoring the Balance Between Children’s Interests and Public Health: A Commonsense Agenda for Childhood Vaccines, Catherine Pakaluk (March 12, 2025)
Learn more: Health Care Reform, Life
Food, Farming, and Human Environment: Fighting for clean, nutritious food and real solutions to chronic disease
- Feeding America Safely: A Practical Path Forward on Pesticides (Event, March 23, 2026)
- Total Legal Immunity for Dangerous Pesticides? Stop Big Ag’s Scheme Now, Jennifer Galardi (January 29, 2026)
- Red States Now Lead the Charge Toward Healthier Living, Jennifer Galardi (August 6, 2025)
Learn more: Public Health, Environment
Medical Freedom and Health Markets: Empowering Americans with choice, affordability, and access to care
- Medicare Advantage Can Be Fixed, Robert Moffit (March 11, 2026)
- Empowering the Person and Reforming Health Care Financing: A Catholic Perspective, Robert Moffit (February 2, 2026)
- How To Mount a Religious Liberty Challenge to a Childhood Vaccine Mandate, Jay Richards, August 5, 2025
Learn more: Budget and Spending, Parental Rights
The health of our children—and through them, the vitality of our nation's future—hangs in the balance. We owe them nothing less than the courage to ask the hardest questions, to follow the evidence wherever it leads, and to rebuild our policies upon a foundation of truth rather than convenience and complacency.”
Jay W. Richards, PhD
Director, Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing
Health is not just the absence of disease—it’s the presence of vitality, clarity, and purpose. Every American deserves to explore what it means to be truly well in mind, body, and soul. Health is apolitical and a sacred, sovereign right.”
Jennifer Galardi
Senior Policy Analyst, Restoring American Wellness, Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing
We are reclaiming health as something that belongs to the American people—not leaving it in the hands of bureaucracies, industries, or broken systems that profit from illness.”
Judy Lopez
Program Manager, Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Human Flourishing
Our Experts
Our Goals
- Reform the perverse incentives produced by the corporatist tangle of government regulators and funders, private business interests, media, and activist nonprofits.
- Constrain the purview and mandate authority of federal and state medical and health agencies.
- Support a comprehensive effort to determine the causes of the crisis of chronic diseases, especially among children—including the role of drugs, food, government-permitted additives, herbicides, pesticides, paints, plastics, batteries, and both FDA and non-FDA-regulated radiation-emitting devices.
- Advance greater medical freedom for individuals, families, insurance companies, and health providers. This requires rolling back unfair and unconstitutional mandates, expanding right-to-try provisions, and establishing price transparency in all health and prescription drug services.
- Expand the ability of parents, consumers, and patients to exercise truly informed consent in their food and medical choices.
- Reform, decentralize, and balance the power of medical and health research to ensure that recommendations are modest, don’t violate common sense, and are based on the best and latest clinical, scientific, and epidemiological evidence.
- Allow and encourage space for independent, heterodox, and dissenting opinions among scientists, especially on issues related to government policies and recommendations.
- Reform and decentralize the power of food and farming interests to ensure that policies and dietary guidelines are grounded in both common sense and the latest clinical, scientific, and epidemiological evidence—with clear pathways for heterodox and dissenting researchers, who are free from the distortions of special interests.
- Reform food and agricultural regulations to encourage greater freedom and innovation for small farmers and their customers.
RAW: Restoring American Wellness Podcast
Restoring American Wellness (RAW) is a new podcast from the Heritage Foundation exploring the ideas, debates, and policy questions shaping the future of health and wellbeing in the United States.
Hosted by Jennifer Galardi and Jay Richards, the show brings together researchers, practitioners, and public figures to examine how health policy affects all Americans and institutions across the country under the timeless principles of limited government, the role of civil society, and the necessary foundations of family and community.
Subscribe to Restoring American Wellness on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more.
