Americans are losing confidence in the nation’s public health agencies, according to a survey by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.
A survey of 1,650 adults conducted last month found that on matters of health, most Americans say they trust their doctors, pediatricians and career scientists at federal agencies more than the political appointees charged with overseeing those scientists.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended some of his controversial decisions by arguing that they were necessary to restore faith in public health.
After Susan Monarez, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was fired after just a month on the job, she wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial that the agency had “damaged public trust” and that her mission was to restore it. And when he fired all the members of an influential vaccine advisory committee last summer, he said the Department of Health and Human Services was “prioritizing restoring public trust over any particular pro- or anti-vaccine agenda.”
However, trust in public health institutions has declined during Trump’s second term, according to the poll. Confidence in the CDC, Food and Drug Administration, and National Institutes of Health was at 75% during the Biden administration. Since Trump’s second term began, trust in agencies has dropped to just 60%.
But 67% of adults said they trust career scientists at agencies like the CDC, NIH and FDA to provide reliable information about public health.
“The public is distinguishing the credibility of career scientists at the CDC, NIH, and FDA from those agencies’ leaders,” said Ken Wineg, the survey’s managing director of research, in a press statement.
Less than half of the respondents agreed with Kennedy and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Dr. He said he has faith in some of the country’s top public health officials, including Mehmet Öz.
Thirty-eight percent of Americans said they trusted Kennedy to provide reliable information about public health, while 42% said the same about Oz.
Longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Those numbers fall short of the 54% of Americans who said they trust Anthony Fauci. Fauci has been a central, yet divisive figure during the nation’s response to the Covid pandemic, serving under the Trump and Biden administrations.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in a statement that trust in public health has been declining since the pandemic, citing a study that looked at trust in doctors and hospitals.
“Secretary Kennedy was brought in to restore credibility through transparency, gold standard science and accountability,” Nixon said. “HHS is focused on rebuilding public trust by ensuring that decisions are driven by rigorous evidence.”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration made unprecedented changes to the childhood vaccine schedule, removing shots to protect against flu, RSV and hepatitis B, among others, from the list of recommended vaccines.
More than three-quarters of respondents, 77%, said they trusted the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which strongly opposed vaccine schedule changes.
Over the past year, the AAP has taken a more vocal role in defending childhood vaccines — pushing back on its own recommendations as federal guidance on shots shifts toward “shared clinical decision making.” In December, CDC advisers selected by Kennedy voted to replace the longstanding recommendation that all newborns receive the first dose of hepatitis B vaccine within 24 hours of birth.
A new poll shows that more Americans side with the AAP than the CDC on vaccine disagreements. Forty-two percent of people surveyed were more likely to accept the AAP’s recommendation on hepatitis B vaccines, compared with 11% who said they trusted the CDC on the same issue. Others said they weren’t sure or wouldn’t take any of the group’s recommendations.
In addition to the AAP, large professional medical organizations such as the American Heart Association and the American Medical Association are more trusted than federal agencies when it comes to public health information.
More than 8 in 10 Americans (82%) said they trust the American Heart Association, while 73% said they trust the American Medical Association. And 86% said they trust their own doctors and nurses to provide reliable information about public health.
“The most exciting news here is that there is widespread trust in one’s own doctor,” said Dr. said Richard Besser, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and member of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “It speaks to the importance of asking doctors to help make sense of all the buzz around health in America.”
