President Donald Trump is tapping newly confirmed U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead a commission charged with addressing autism and other “health burdens.”

Trump issued an executive order late last week calling for the creation of a Make America Healthy Again Commission, which the White House says will be “tasked with investigating and addressing the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis.”

The group’s initial focus will be childhood chronic diseases, the order said, citing conditions including autism, allergies, asthma, autoimmune disease, fatty liver disease, obesity and attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Within 180 days, the commission is to produce a strategy to improve the health of the nation’s children.

The creation of the commission was announced shortly after the Senate confirmed Kennedy to take over the Department of Health and Human Services by a vote of 52 to 48.

Kennedy won the support of all Senate Republicans with the exception of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a polio survivor who said he would “not condone the re-litigation of proven cures” and faulted Kennedy for “a record of trafficking in dangerous conspiracy theories and eroding trust in public health institutions.” No Democrats voted to confirm him.

Kennedy has for years promoted a long-discredited link between autism and childhood vaccines and he refused to concede that no such link exists during his confirmation hearings.

That has alarmed disability advocacy organizations, with a dozen groups recently banding together to issue a statement asserting that vaccines do not cause autism.

Danielle Hall, director of health equity at the Autism Society of America, said the “ambiguity” of the Make America Healthy Again Commission’s scope as it relates to autism is concerning.

“Autism is not a chronic disease, it is a complex developmental condition, and any federal initiative addressing autism must be grounded in scientific evidence, and the lived experiences of autistic individuals and their families,” Hall said. “We urge the administration to provide clarity on the commission’s objectives and to ensure that debunked theories are not revisited.”

However, Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation, expressed cautious optimism that the Trump administration’s attention to autism will be a positive, particularly for those with profound autism.

“I give RFK credit for wanting to study the causes of autism. We need more studies looking at the underlying biological causes of autism so that we can develop treatments that are based on biology and relieve the suffering that our children are experiencing,” Singer said. “But the key is we can’t let the discredited vaccine hypothesis become a distraction. That question has been answered.”