Only 50% of Americans say they trust the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommendations to improve public health, down from 77% last year, according to a new poll released Tuesday by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation.
The survey of 2,205 U.S. adults also found that half of Americans now trust federal public health recommendations less than they did before President Donald Trump began his second term in January 2025. The decline is consistent across nearly all subgroups measured — men and women; white, Black, and Hispanic respondents; those in urban, suburban, and rural areas; people with and without college educations; and Democrat and independent voters.
The only group for whom trust increased over the past year was Republican voters, from 63% in April 2025 to 67% this month. Brian Castrucci, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, called the data a demonstration of "deep polarization of facts and science."
What the Right Is Saying
Conservatives and Republican-aligned observers frame the trust decline differently, pointing to pre-existing skepticism toward federal overreach and arguing that reduced confidence reflects appropriate scrutiny of government recommendations.
Castrucci himself noted that relatively low but consistent distrust among Republicans is unsurprising "for a party that favors small government." He suggested some level of skepticism toward centralized authority has long been a feature of conservative thought rather than a new development tied to the current administration.
Republican voters have maintained higher trust in CDC compared to other groups even as overall numbers fell, and their confidence increased year-over-year. The poll shows 67% of Republicans currently trust the agency's recommendations.
Some conservatives have argued that COVID-era guidance — including shifting messaging on masks and boosters — contributed to longer-term erosion of public confidence that predates Trump's second term. SteelFisher acknowledged this history: "I think that we would look back at COVID and say, 'OK, there's lots of politics at play there too.' If you just say it's just one party or the other, that's a mistake."
What the Left Is Saying
Democratic-aligned health experts and progressive advocates point to leadership changes under the Trump administration as driving the trust decline.
Gillian SteelFisher, director of the Harvard Opinion Research Program, noted that under the current administration — including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former anti-vaccine activist, as head of the Department of Health and Human Services — many Americans believe CDC recommendations are influenced by leaders' personal beliefs rather than scientific consensus. Sixty-eight percent of respondents agreed with that characterization in the poll.
"People feel like decisions are being made without following standard practices and that makes people nervous," SteelFisher said. She added that about 6 in 10 respondents said federal public health agencies have cut or scaled back programs or funding for health and medical research "too much."
Progressive critics argue the shift represents a dangerous erosion of evidence-based governance. Castrucci noted that measles, Ebola, and hantavirus "don't really care what we think" about politics.
"If we don't have a united response, that is extraordinarily dangerous for our country," he said. Only 14% of Democrats approve of what federal public health agencies have been doing since the start of Trump's second administration, compared with 80% of Republicans, according to the poll.
What the Numbers Show
The poll presents several data points illustrating shifting trust in public health institutions:
Trust in CDC recommendations fell to 50% from 77% year-over-year — a 27-percentage-point decline. From 2022 through 2025, post-pandemic CDC trust had remained stable between 74% and 78%.
State and local agencies retained higher confidence than federal counterparts: 70% of Americans say they trust their local health departments (down from about 82% in 2025), while 66% trust state health departments (down from about 80%).
Partisan approval gaps are stark on current agency performance: 80% of Republicans approve versus only 14% of Democrats.
On childhood vaccine safety, 96% of Democrats say routine vaccines are "very" or "somewhat" safe, compared with 85% of Republicans — a difference but still high majorities among both groups.
Americans broadly support the CDC's updated dietary guidelines: 90% support recommendations to avoid or sharply limit added sugar and highly processed foods; 85% back increased protein intake; 62% support increasing consumption of beef and whole milk.
When comparing institutional trust, polls from the Annenberg Public Policy Center found roughly three-quarters of Americans trust non-governmental health organizations such as the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and American Heart Association. In contrast, about 6 in 10 said they trusted CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
The Bottom Line
The poll indicates a rapid and broad-based erosion of confidence in federal public health guidance that experts say could complicate responses to future disease outbreaks.
Castrucci observed that while trust in CDC has declined substantially, other data suggests Americans haven't abandoned scientific facts entirely — they have simply shifted their trusted messengers. "CDC has lost its cachet as a trusted messenger," he said.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, noted that poll questions about trust were positioned after explicitly political framing questions referencing pre- and post-Trump eras, which she said may have increased polarized responses. She argued the key takeaway is that Americans are increasingly turning to non-governmental health organizations over federal agencies when guidance conflicts.
"The answer used to be there was no difference," Jamieson said of past public health messaging. "And now the answer is they trust the non-governmental organizations more than CDC."
Whether Republican support for federal health agencies remains stable if political leadership changes in the future, as Castrucci suggested it might, will be a question for future polling.