Trust in federal health leadership is failing under RFK Jr., new poll finds

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN

(CNN) — Most of the American public does not approve of the way Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running the nation’s health agencies, according to a new KFF poll, and there’s an erosion of trust in reliable vaccine information from the federal government in particular.

Nearly 6 in 10 adults in the United States say they disapprove of Kennedy’s overall job performance as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, KFF found.

Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to disapprove of Kennedy overall – 87% versus 26% – but there’s division even within Kennedy’s signature Make America Healthy Again movement, which is mostly composed of Republicans.

Overall, about 4 in 10 adults say they consider themselves supporters of the MAHA movement, according to the KFF survey. But even within the movement, about 30% say they disapprove of the way Kennedy is handling his role as HHS secretary.

The MAHA agenda is generally focused on food, the environment and pharmaceuticals – especially vaccines. Under Kennedy’s leadership, there has been a complete overhaul of the independent committee that advises the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine guidance and major changes made to federal vaccine recommendations.

But the public dislikes the way Kennedy is handling vaccine policy even more than they do his overall job performance, KFF found; 62% of adults overall and 35% of those who consider themselves part of the MAHA movement say they disapprove at least somewhat.

And public trust in the CDC is now the lowest it’s been since the Covid-19 pandemic began, according to KFF. Only half of adults in the US say they trust the agency to provide reliable vaccine information, down from 57% in July and 63% in September 2024. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to trust the CDC, but trust even among Democrats has dropped significantly – tumbling 24 percentage points since 2023.

Instead, the public is more likely to turn to other groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association for vaccine information, with about two-thirds of adults saying they trust these groups for reliable vaccine information.

Amid the federal vaccine policy upheaval, these groups and other major organizations have broken with federal guidance and published their own vaccine recommendations – and some states have formally adopted these recommendations, too.

According to KFF, about 45% of the American public says they trust their state government for reliable vaccine information – lower than trust in the professional groups but about 10 percentage points more than trust expressed for Kennedy.

“It’s encouraging if far from ideal that as trust in our nation’s scientific agencies crumbles, the public does trust the professional associations who have stepped forward,” KFF President and CEO Drew Altman said.

Doctors remain the most trusted source of vaccine information, KFF found, with more than 80% of adults saying they trust their physician “a great deal” or “a fair amount.”

The findings are based on responses from a nationally representative sample of more than 1,300 US adults. Survey participants were polled during the last week of September, starting the day after the Trump administration held a major news conference about autism and Tylenol.

At that briefing, President Donald Trump announced that the US Food and Drug Administration would notify doctors that the use of Tylenol during pregnancy can be associated with a “very increased risk of autism,” despite decades of evidence that it is safe.

KFF found that most US adults had heard the claim that taking Tylenol during pregnancy can cause autism in children and that many were uncertain about its validity.

Less than 5% said they thought the claim was “definitely true,” and about a third said they thought the claim was “definitely false” – but most fell somewhere in the middle, with an even split between those who thought it was “probably true” and “probably false.”

Democrats were about five times more likely than Republicans to say the claim was “definitely false.” But a majority of women – including more than a third of Democratic women and about two-thirds of Republican women – expressed some uncertainty about the validity of the claim, KFF found.

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