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In recent years, there has been growing momentum around improving the health of our nation. While such movements can carry political overtones, the goal of making America healthier represents something that should resonate across party lines, which is a genuine opportunity for positive change for the nation's health regardless of which side of the aisle you sit on. What I want to do here is outline a few basic easy wins that we can pursue culturally at the individual level to improve the overall health of the nation while examining the role of systemic barriers to acting on healthier behaviors.
This momentum around nationwide improvements in health has coalesced around initiatives like "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA), which focuses on policy-level reforms including phasing out petroleum-based food dyes in favor of natural alternatives, overhauling the FDA's Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) pathway to prevent untested ingredients from entering our food supply, and reforming programs like SNAP to prioritize wholesome foods over processed options (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2025). These policy discussions reflect a broader recognition that systemic change is needed to support individual health choices even though the details on implementation are still evolving.
A healthier population creates benefits that extend far beyond individual well-being. When people maintain better health, they experience increased energy, improved mental clarity, and greater life satisfaction, leading to stronger families and communities. From a healthcare perspective, healthier individuals reduce strain on our medical systems, which currently spend approximately 4.5 trillion annually which is roughly 17.3% of our GDP, with much of that going toward treating preventable chronic diseases (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2023). When fewer people develop these conditions, healthcare resources can focus on those who need more complex care, leading to shorter wait times and better quality of treatment. This translates into more stable insurance markets with potentially lower premiums for everyone. Economically, healthier people remain productive longer, take fewer sick days, and contribute more to their communities, creating a positive cycle that benefits society as a whole.
Any broad top-down changes will take time, and in some cases generations, to fully realize. So, while movements for health improvement will push things in a positive direction, there are numerous actions individuals can take today to improve aspects of their health that aren't tied to policy decisions. For example, it may take months or years to implement system-wide healthcare policy changes, but you can take action today that makes you less likely to become ill, and much of it is surprisingly simple. However, this article isn’t going to simply hand-wave the issue by saying ‘make better choices’. We are going to look at the broader context that filters down to the individual and how that may impact the choices they make, or are able to make.
While individual agency remains powerful, and something that Innova Vita Fitness heavily emphasizes, we must still acknowledge that structural barriers significantly influence health outcomes. Social determinants of health including factors like economic stability, education access, healthcare quality, neighborhood environment, and social context all account for a significant share of health outcomes according to the World Health Organization. Food deserts, socioeconomic barriers, time poverty, unsafe neighborhoods for physical activity, and health literacy disparities create challenges that individual willpower alone cannot overcome.
This is where policy initiatives become essential to long-term change. Structural interventions like improving food access, enhancing neighborhood safety for physical activity, and addressing environmental health concerns work to remove barriers that make healthy choices difficult or impossible for many Americans. With this context, it’s not blaming individuals for structural failures, it’s encouraging action where possible while advocating for systemic change that makes healthy choices accessible to all. For this reason we encourage everyone reading this article to vote on initiatives and bills that remove these barriers. This could include supporting urban planning that prioritizes walkability, advocating for SNAP benefit structures that incentivize fresh produce, or backing school policies that increase physical education time and improve cafeteria nutrition standards.
As wellness industry professionals, we're positioned uniquely at the intersection of individual behavior change and systemic health improvement. The challenge is that much of the US healthcare system currently operates reactively, responding to illness more effectively than preventing disease. This reactive approach stems from structural factors: fee-for-service payment models that reward volume over outcomes, quality metrics that prioritize process measures over health outcomes, time constraints in primary care visits, and fragmentation between medical care and community resources (Berwick et al., 2008).
Unfortunately, once the system engages for chronic condition management, costs escalate rapidly as many Americans have experienced. Currently, six in ten U.S. adults live with at least one chronic disease, and four in ten have two or more. This creates a massive financial burden that often leads to downstream health issues related to mental and financial stress in addition to the conditions themselves.
One of the most impactful strategies is helping people avoid needing to manage preventable chronic conditions in the first place. We advocate for education first so people don't fall prey to misinformation and can make better decisions about their personal health maintenance. When you understand basic health and exercise science, you can create your own effective exercise routines, know how to improve your diet, and know what to look for in a personal trainer, nutritionist, or coach if you decide to work with one. All in all, prevention costs significantly less and yields better quality of life than reactive treatment.
The financial argument for preventive health measures is compelling. The cost of educating someone about proper nutrition, exercise, and stress management is minimal compared to the lifetime costs of managing diabetes, heart disease, or other chronic conditions but it must be organized, actionable, and well promoted.
Earlier, access to education was listed as a structural barrier. What does it mean to become educated about health and habits surrounding things like fitness and nutrition? This question needs expansion because of the overwhelming amount of information available through social media and the internet. It’s also the area that Innova Vita Fitness is most qualified to speak to of these issues due to our emphasis on health education. The problem isn't lack of available information, it's the abundance of content that creates false expectations and confusion about what you actually need to become healthy. There needs to be something organized and appropriate for beginners so that they aren’t stuck piecing together information from random articles, blog posts, social media advice and YouTube videos. The perception from skeptics is that there is literally all the information about becoming a healthier individual needed online, however as mentioned earlier this information is scattered and unorganized across multiple sources of wildly varying quality. A single source of information where all the fundamentals are included with immediately actionable advice made accessible to anyone would be best. The solution lies in curated, evidence-based education programs that organize foundational health information in accessible formats. Whether through corporate wellness initiatives, community health programs, or scalable digital platforms, the key is meeting people where they are with actionable guidance rather than expecting them to synthesize a strategy on their own from scattered uncurated resources that may not even be accurate. Organizations like Innova Vita Fitness are working to address this gap through structured curricula, but broader industry adoption of similar models is needed to reach population-scale impact.
So to bring this back to the question posed in the title: "Can We Make America Healthy Again?" I say "Yes," but it requires both individual action and structural reform working together. It's encouraging that we have momentum around improving the nation's health through policy initiatives, and these efforts will lead to important long-term systemic changes. Those changes take time, though, and there are numerous actions individuals can take without waiting for policy shifts but at the same time we don’t want to hand-wave structural issues that create real barriers to lasting changes in population health.
As wellness industry professionals, we're positioned to do our part by continuing to provide health and wellness education at scale to individuals, businesses, and hopefully eventually to the broader population. If you work in health, HR, benefits, education, or community planning, you have leverage. Consider these steps: Share evidence-based education through your channels, design workplace or community environments with health-supporting defaults, advocate for policies that address social determinants in your sphere of influence, and measure outcomes to demonstrate what works. The movement toward a healthier America requires all of us meeting individuals where they are while simultaneously removing the barriers that make healthy choices difficult.
Berwick, D. M., Nolan, T. W., & Whittington, J. (2008). The Triple Aim: Care, health, and cost. Health Affairs, 27(3), 759–769.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (2023). National health expenditure data: 2022 highlights. https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2025). Make America Healthy Again (MAHA). https://www.hhs.gov/maha/index.html
World Health Organization. (2024). Social determinants of health. https://www.who.int/health-topics/social-determinants-of-health
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