Survey finds declining trust in U.S. health agencies under Trump administration

Public trust in U.S. health agencies has declined since President Trump returned to office in January, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.

Just 64% expressed confidence in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the survey, down 8 points from 72% who gave the same answer under the Biden administration a year earlier.

Another 63% expressed confidence in the Food and Drug Administration, down 10 points from 73% in September 2024. Confidence in the National Institutes of Health fell 12 points from 74% to 62% over the same period.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the center’s director, said sharp declines among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents drove down overall confidence in the agencies.

“Although the decline in confidence in the CDC, NIH and FDA is being driven by disaffection by Democrats who regarded these agencies more highly when a Democratic president controlled the executive branch, it is important to note that they continue to have significantly higher levels of confidence than Republicans,” Ms. Jamieson said in an email.

The research center asked 1,699 members of an online panel on Aug. 5-18 about their confidence that key federal agencies were “providing the public with trustworthy information about matters concerning public health.”

Annenberg said that Democratic confidence in the CDC, FDA and NIH ranged between 65% and 70% on the survey, down from 87% to 94% measured in September 2024.

Trust in the agencies among self-identified Republican respondents stayed about the same, ranging between 50% and 66% last year and from 56% to 61% this year.

Trust among self-identified independents dipped from between 63% and 73% last year to between 59% and 62% this year.

This year’s survey also found that just 39% of adults surveyed expressed confidence that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is providing them with trustworthy public health information.

While Mr. Kennedy’s efforts to eliminate chronic childhood diabetes and obesity have received high marks from many doctors, his well-known skepticism about the effectiveness of vaccines has generated alarm among his critics.

Mr. Kennedy ousted all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in June, sowing confusion among those who trusted its previous vaccine policies, Annenberg noted.

“A clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science,” Mr. Kennedy said at the time.

The center noted that Mr. Kennedy called the CDC “a cesspool of corruption” last year.

Mr. Kennedy cannot be trusted as long as he steers U.S. health agencies in an anti-vaccine direction, some medical professionals say.

“I, myself, have close to zero trust in federal public health agencies because they are all under the control of a rabid anti-vaccine zealot: RFK Jr.,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said Friday in an email. “While he has power over these agencies, I don’t think it is possible to rebuild trust.”

By contrast, Annenberg noted that 57% of those surveyed expressed confidence in Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, “even after years of attacks by right-wing critics over his leadership of the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

On the positive side, Annenberg found that 86% of adults had confidence in their own “doctor, nurse or other primary health care provider” to give them trustworthy information. That makes family doctors the most trusted source of health information and is statistically unchanged in surveys conducted since June 2023.

In a statement emailed Friday to The Washington Times, a Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman defended Mr. Kennedy’s efforts to overhaul the federal agency since taking office in February.

“Americans are facing record levels of illness even after the HHS budget has ballooned during the last four years,” Emily G. Hilliard, an HHS press secretary, said in the statement. “Under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, we are cutting waste, streamlining bureaucracy and demanding accountability to deliver real results for the American people and Make America Healthy Again.”

Mr. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” campaign has successfully pressured food companies to reduce addictive chemical ingredients and eliminate artificial dyes.

He has also persuaded Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho and Utah to remove sugary drinks from federal food stamp benefits.

The survey had a 3.5-point margin of error at the 95% confidence level.