The tale of Hank Aaron, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and the public’s health highlights the vital importance of qualified leaders in public health institutions. As a public health historian and editor of a premier public health journal, I reflect on this recent history as we face a new administration.
On January 22, 2021, Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron—Baseball Hall of Famer and the man who broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home-run record—passed away in his sleep at the age of 86 years. Just 2 weeks earlier, Aaron had been vaccinated against COVID-19 at a Morehouse School of Medicine clinic in Atlanta, Georgia.
Shortly afterward, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, chairman of Children’s Health Defense and now being considered as secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services, claimed Aaron’s death was “part of a wave of suspicious deaths among the elderly closely following administration of COVID vaccines” (https://bit.ly/4fET3iq).
Kennedy’s claim, implying the vaccine caused Aaron’s death, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how evidence-based public health operates. While it is impossible to determine counterfactuals—whether Aaron would have survived without vaccination—public health evaluates risks at the population level.
To assess this event properly, two key questions must be considered: What was the likelihood of Hank Aaron dying the week he did if he had not been vaccinated? Aaron was 86 years old and likely experienced cardiac arrest or sudden death, a common occurrence at his age. By January 22, 2021, more than 11 million people aged 65 years and older in the United States had already received the vaccine. Among this group, thousands of cardiac arrests and sudden deaths would have been expected based solely on age-related mortality. Aaron’s risk of death that week was high, irrespective of his vaccination status. What was the likelihood the vaccine caused Aaron’s death? Sudden deaths directly caused by the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine are exceedingly rare. A report from the National Academy of Medicine found the evidence insufficient to establish any causal relationship between COVID-19 vaccines and sudden cardiac events and rejected a causal link with myocardial infarction (https://bit.ly/4eGSEe3; p. 5).1. 2.
Furthermore, the World Health Organization has highlighted the immense benefits of vaccination, particularly among older adults, estimating a 62% reduction in COVID-19 mortality in individuals aged 80 years or older (https://bit.ly/3ZM9cgo).
The timing of Aaron’s death, though coincidental, does not support Kennedy’s claim. His passing is better explained by age-related risks, whereas attributing it to the vaccine remains speculative and dangerous.
Claims like Kennedy’s undermine public trust in vaccines and endanger lives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation played a tragic role in vaccine hesitancy, leading to preventable deaths. Research by Woolf et al. published in AJPH demonstrated that excess mortality during the pandemic disproportionately occurred in states with Republican governors, where vaccine uptake was lower in people aged younger than 65 years (https://bit.ly/4gibwkW). The 10 states with the highest excess death rates were West Virginia, New Mexico, Mississippi, South Carolina, Wyoming, Louisiana, Arizona, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Alabama. Accurate, evidence-based communication about vaccines’ life-saving effects is essential to prevent such outcomes.
The reasoning behind Kennedy’s claim reflects a lack of familiarity with the population perspective—a foundational principle of public health. This approach, first pioneered in 1662 by John Graunt, uses data to identify patterns and relationships in health outcomes. It requires specialized training and is not something that can be improvised or based on anecdotal observations.
The logic Kennedy applies to Aaron’s death—extrapolating causality from single events—threatens to undermine well-established public health policies. For example, consider the causal link between smoking and lung cancer. While only about one in 10 heavy smokers develops lung cancer, the relationship is undeniable when comparing heavy smokers to nonsmokers: the risk of lung cancer is 20 times higher in smokers. Following Kennedy’s reasoning, one might question the link between smoking and cancer simply because not all smokers are affected—a dangerous regression in understanding causality.
Such flawed reasoning has real-world consequences. Public health leaders must be equipped with the expertise to approach health issues systematically, relying on evidence rather than speculation.
As I wrote at the beginning of this piece, the tale of Hank Aaron, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and the public’s health has profound implications for who should lead our public health institutions. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency require leaders with specialized training in public health.
Public health is a science, grounded in rigorous data analysis and a population-based perspective. It cannot be improvised. Decisions affecting millions of lives demand expertise, not anecdotal reasoning or personal biases. As we enter a new administration, we must prioritize leadership that upholds these principles.
Historic Redlining Practices and Contemporary Determinants of Health in the Detroit Metropolitan Area
The patterns identified through this study suggest variations in the distribution of widely used determinants of health, some 80 years after the HOLC [Home Owners’ Loan Corporation] grading system was implemented. Our findings are consistent with existing studies that demonstrate that HOLC grades are associated with the contemporary distribution of risk and opportunity and that those distributions are associated with racial inequities in health. . . . Furthermore, our findings provide an example of the persistent effects of structural racism, or racist ideologies that are embedded in social policies. Neighborhoods with larger proportions of Black residents were more likely to be redlined; those neighborhoods remain disproportionately Black in contemporary Detroit. The contributions of those historical policies to differential patterns of investment, governance, and environmental exposures and to contemporary racial inequities in health offer one example of racism as a structural driver of health inequities.
From AJPH, Supplement 1 2023, pp. S54–S55, 144 words
