The Sad State of Trust in the CDC and FDA
Levels of trust in the nation’s scientific agencies that affect people’s everyday lives—the CDC and the FDA—are abysmally low, driven in part by polarization and partisanship. It’s a danger to the nation if another epidemic hits and the country needs public health leadership or a new drug or vaccine to get through it.
Here are a few numbers:
Fewer than half of the public say they have confidence in the FDA and CDC to carry out their core responsibilities, and in a finding I would expect more from fringe groups than the public, just three in 10 say the agencies can act independently without being influenced by outside groups.
These measures, and many others we found in our latest Health Information and Tracking Poll, are not all that different from the levels of trust we saw in 2023. Underneath the topline data, however, is a striking shift in who trusts the CDC and FDA and who doesn’t, which is driven by partisanship. The share of Republicans who have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in the CDC to provide vaccine information increased 11 percentage points since 2023, and 10 percentage points for FDA. By contrast, it fell by 18 points for Democrats for CDC and by 19 points for FDA. The increase in trust by Republicans especially demonstrates the power of partisan tribalism, as Republicans, 80% of whom are now MAGA supporters, have never been a group distinguished by faith in government or public health.
Overall levels of trust are simply very low. Thirty-nine percent of Democrats currently have “a lot” or “some” confidence in the ability of the CDC and FDA to deal with infectious disease outbreaks like measles and bird flu; 46% of Republicans do. There are only a couple of measures for which the agencies break 50%: fifty-two percent of Democrats have confidence in their ability to ensure vaccine safety and effectiveness and 50% of Republicans have a lot or some confidence that they will ensure the safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs (the FDA’s job).
Similar gaps driven by partisan viewpoints can be seen at the state and local level where 83% of Democrats trust their local health department to provide reliable vaccine information compared with 51% of Republicans who do. We don’t know from our polling whether trust in state health departments shifts with changes in governorships or not, but we do know that state and county health departments have been taking a lot of heat since Covid.
There’s one particularly revealing finding from the survey: The same percentage of Republicans (74%) trust President Trump and Secretary Kennedy (73%) to provide “reliable information about vaccines” as their pediatrician (also 73%). The question wasn’t about support for Trump or loyalty to him, which you would expect to be very high for Republicans, it was about vaccine information. It shows that for many poll respondents, every question can be a party loyalty test these days regardless of what the question may actually be about.
Throughout the pandemic as we tracked attitudes and behavior on vaccines, we found that one variable consistently predicted attitudes and behavior on Covid on almost every dimension—what political party people belonged to. And right now, the parties tend to represent the edges of right and left more than the middle. But our polling also shows most Americans live somewhere near the middle on public health issues—uncertain what and who to believe, subject to misinformation but potentially persuadable by the facts, too. Just like countering misinformation, the best opportunity to rebuild trust with the public may be in the middle, not at the edges.
There is no one thing that will address these low levels of trust in the CDC and FDA. Americans have always had a healthy distrust of government, but not one whipsawed by partisan affiliation until more recently. Restoring reasonable levels of trust in the CDC and FDA will require many things. Among them: an administration, Republican or Democratic, committed to restoring their independence as science-based agencies; and a commitment by the agencies to meet people where they are and become not just science-based agencies but health and science communications agencies, too.
Investing in real communications capabilities for these agencies is easier said than done, not just because budgets are being slashed, but because both Congress and sometimes the press have looked askance at agency investments in communications, seeing them mostly as public relations plays by agency heads and not as a vital tool to advance the agency’s mission. In the past, most of the communications capability needed to deal with a crisis rested elsewhere in HHS, sometimes with the Surgeon General, and in the White House, not in the agencies themselves. Depending on the administration that has sometimes been helpful and sometimes overtly political.
As always, the country will look to the CDC and FDA if another pandemic hits. But with levels of trust this low and polarized, can they still lead the whole country? If not, who does?