(CNN) — US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. disparaged the department he’s been tasked with running in his appearances on Fox News this week, describing HHS as “on a 30- or 40-year decline” and calling the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “a broken agency.”

“When you look back, what would you say is the last great success that our government public health agencies have had?” “Fox and Friends Weekend” co-host Charles Hurt asked on Sunday.

“Well, I don’t think there have been successes,” Kennedy responded.

But career public health professionals and historians say he’s wrong.

“These are advances that take a lot of time to research and prove, and often help people who are already healthy,” Dr. Barron Lerner, a physician and historian of medicine at Ne

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