Americans’ confidence in the CDC’s vaccine recommendations is dropping markedly under Trump

Americans’ confidence in federal vaccine recommendations is dropping markedly under Trump

By Claire Cameron edited by Tanya Lewis

Only six in 10 Americans trust the federal government’s recommendations on childhood vaccines, a new poll shows. That marks a notable drop from June 2025, when 71 percent of respondents said they trusted the government’s vaccine guidance. The biggest decline was among Democrats — from 81 percent to 66 percent — although Republicans and independents’ confidence also declined.

About one in three people polled by Ipsos and Axios said they have more confidence in vaccine guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), an independent medical group, than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The AAP has been sharply critical of the Trump administration’s sweeping changes to US vaccine policy over the past year. Only 8 percent of respondents said they prefer guidance from the CDC, which has historically set vaccine policy for the country.

Since President Donald Trump’s second term began, federal health officials have rolled back recommendations for vaccines that protect against COVID, hepatitis B, meningococcal meningitis, rotavirus and more. At the same time, the Trump administration dismantled and replaced Health and Human Services and longtime vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. the members of an important vaccine advisory panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

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“It’s encouraging, the fact that the majority of people are listening to health professionals, but it’s disheartening, the fact that there’s a chorus of opinions now instead of a singular voice,” says Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease physician and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. That’s a problem, he says, because it could hurt efforts to encourage people to get vaccinated.

“I think people are confused,” he says.

The poll comes a day after the AAP and five other independent medical groups won a legal challenge to the Trump administration’s overhaul of the nation’s childhood vaccine recommendations and replacement of ACIP members. The Department of Health and Human Services has said it will try to overturn the decision.

The AAP and other public health experts say the Trump administration’s actions put the lives of children and other vulnerable populations at risk, especially as cases of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases like measles continue to rise. In the new poll, a growing share of Americans said they were concerned about measles — from 18 percent who expressed concern in December 2024 to 36 percent in March of this year, although Democrats were more likely to see measles as a risk than Republicans or independents. The past year has seen the highest incidence of measles since before the disease was eradicated in 2000, and the country may already have lost its measles-free status. (The Pan American Health Organization is expected to make a decision on status at a meeting next month.)

The survey underscores warnings from public health experts that the Trump administration’s vaccine policy changes will undermine trust in federal health agencies, said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University. “This loss of trust has created confusion for parents who, in the midst of deadly outbreaks, have had to navigate vaccine decisions without a clear source of reliable information,” she says.

Lauren Young contributed reporting for this story.

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