People once trusted federal health agencies across party lines, according to multiple opinion polls and public health researchers. But a year into Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tenure at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the ratings have shifted, and the decline has been tied by critics to changes in vaccine guidance and to the way Kennedy has sought to reshape how the agencies communicate.
The AP reports that Kennedy, who was sworn in to lead HHS one year ago, has argued that federal health agencies need to become more transparent so Americans can make their own health choices. HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said Kennedy’s mandate is to restore “transparency, scientific rigor, and accountability,” but doctors and major medical groups say the approach has undermined trust rather than rebuild it.
Kennedy has described his plan to make the CDC trustworthy through openness, saying in testimony last September that he would “tell them what we know, we’re going to tell them what we don’t know, and we’re going to tell them what we’re researching and how we’re doing it,” adding that “it’s the only way to restore trust in the agency — by making it trustworthy.” Critics say that posture has clashed with the advice of mainstream scientists and physicians, particularly around vaccines.
KFF’s latest findings, as described by AP, show 47% of Americans trust the CDC “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to provide reliable vaccine information, a decline of about 10 percentage points since the beginning of Trump’s second term. The survey found trust among Democrats fell 9 percentage points since September to 55%, and it also found Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement has not insulated vaccine guidance from skepticism: fewer than half of movement supporters said they trust CDC and Food and Drug Administration recommendations about childhood vaccine schedules “a lot” or “some.”
Other polling cited by AP shows a similar pattern in how Americans evaluate the CDC’s work. Gallup surveys found the share of Americans saying the CDC is doing a “good job” fell from 40% in 2024 to 31% last year, following a broader erosion in public confidence that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated for some federal institutions.
During the pandemic, confidence in federal public health messaging fell as Americans confronted agency mistakes and guidance that some people disliked, AP said. More than two decades ago, Gallup reported that 60% or more of Americans gave the CDC high marks, but by 2020 the share of Americans who believed the CDC was doing at least a “good job” fell to 40% and then leveled off for a few years, according to AP’s account.
AP also included personal and professional reactions that connect trust to day-to-day decisions. It reported the experience of Alix Ellis, a hairstylist and mother in Madison, Georgia, who said she lost confidence during the pandemic after guidance that she found difficult to understand. “I’m not saying that we were lied to, but that is when I was like, OK, ‘Why are we doing this?’ ” Ellis said, describing her confusion as businesses followed rules that limited how close workers could be in the salon setting.
Doctors who support immunization guidance say Kennedy helped create the conditions for distrust before seeking to fix it. Dr. Rob Davidson, an emergency physician in Michigan who runs the Committee to Protect Health Care, told AP that Kennedy’s efforts are “upside-down,” saying: “You fed those people false information to create the distrust, and now you’re sweeping into power and you’re going to cure the distrust by promoting the same disinformation.”
AP says Kennedy has used his office to take steps that diverge from medical consensus. Among the moves described were announcements that COVID-19 vaccines were no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women, a direction to the CDC in November to abandon its position that vaccines do not cause autism without supplying new evidence, and an effort earlier this year to reduce the number of vaccines recommended for children, which medical groups said could weaken protections against diseases.
As those actions have unfolded, AP reports that confusion has spread even as some supporters applauded the changes. Mark Rasmussen, a 67-year-old retiree in Danbury, Connecticut, said he had “much less trust,” while professional medical groups urged Americans not to follow new vaccine recommendations. More than 200 public health and advocacy groups urged Congress to investigate changes to the vaccine schedule, according to AP, and the American Medical Association and the University of Minnesota’s Vaccine Integrity Project announced a new evidence-based process for reviewing respiratory virus vaccine safety.
Major public health leaders also warned that Americans face a growing challenge in deciding what sources to follow. “We see burgeoning confusion about which sources to trust and about which sources are real. That makes decision-making on an individual level much harder,” said Dr. Megan Ranney, dean of the Yale School of Public Health, according to AP. Ranney said she worried the confusion was contributing to a rise in diseases such as whooping cough and measles, which the report said had previously been largely eliminated in the U.S.
AP reports that surveys indicate growing wavering about the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. An August 2025 Annenberg survey found 82% said they would be “very” or “somewhat” likely to recommend that an eligible child get an MMR vaccine, compared with 90% in November 2024, AP said. HHS officials said they are promoting independent decision-making by families while also working to reduce preventable diseases, and they said reducing routine vaccine recommendations was intended to focus attention on the riskiest conditions.
Kennedy has also urged Americans to draw their own conclusions about experts and agencies. In a recent appearance on The Katie Miller Podcast, he said: “This idea that you should trust the experts,” and then added, “a good mother doesn’t do that,” according to AP’s account.