Dr. Ashish K. Jha is dean of Brown University School of Public Health and a contributing Globe Opinion writer:

Over the past decade, the United States has made meaningful progress in expanding health coverage and improving care for millions of Americans. But that progress is now in jeopardy. The newly passed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” will have far-reaching consequences for the health insurance of millions of Americans. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that nearly 10 million Americans could lose their health insurance by 2034 as a result of the new legislation. In Massachusetts, officials estimate 300,000 people are at risk of losing their health coverage.

“You’re not going to restore trust in public health until you take some accountability for the mistakes you’ve made,” says Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator under President Joe Biden. “Then you’ve got to just keep spreading good information and you’ve got to build allies to do that across the political aisle.”

Dean of the School of Public Health Dr. Ashish Jha penned this column on the potential impacts of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act."

As Americans approach Independence Day, we should reflect on the foundational ideals of our country. A central ideal, laid out nearly 250 years ago in the Declaration of Independence, is our unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s a core promise of America, but one that cannot be fully realized without one of its key enablers.

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was appointed secretary of Health and Human Services, some hoped that the responsibility of public office would temper his long-standing hostility toward vaccines. Instead, he is doing exactly what many of us feared: dismantling the systems that protect Americans from preventable infectious diseases.

Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, tells CNN's Wolf Blitzer why he calls HHS Secretary Kennedy's reasoning for firing all members of the CDC's vaccine advisory committee "nonsense."