The HHS Announcement, May 2026
May 29, 2026The federal government actually put some real money and attention behind this in May 2026. Here's what they announced and what it means.
On May 29, 2026, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stood up at a press conference in New Hampshire, which has been hit hard by Lyme, and laid out a handful of new federal moves to go after Lyme disease and other tick-borne illness. It came right after he sat down with state lawmakers and patient groups as part of his "Take Back Your Health" tour. Here's what's actually in it:
- A multi-million-dollar pilot program to control ticks run out of the New England Center of Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases up in Amherst, Massachusetts. They're teaming up with the Indian Health Service and the Wampanoag Tribe, and the idea is to go after ticks while they're still feeding on wildlife, before they ever get the chance to bite a person.
- Up to $2.5 million in innovation challenges meant to spur new ideas for catching and preventing tick-borne disease.
- NIH money specifically for alpha-gal research. They also said NIH has already got an eye on some private-sector products that might help keep people from developing alpha-gal after a tick bite, though nothing's been spelled out publicly yet.
- A program to connect patients with doctors who actually know what they're doing on this stuff, which addresses the most common complaint I hear from Lyme patients: that most doctors don't take it seriously or don't recognize it.
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Kennedy also said the government still wants to cut Lyme disease cases by 25 percent by 2035, and he backed reauthorizing the Kay Hagan Tick Act.
For context, NIH is already putting close to $50 million a year into Lyme research alone, and around $122 million a year into tick-borne disease research overall, according to the announcement. That's real money, and it tells you there's already a decent amount of federal machinery working on this problem.