NEW YORK — Since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services one year ago, he has defended his upending of federal health policy by saying the changes will restore trust in America’s public health agencies.
But as the longtime leader of the anti-vaccine movement scales back immunization guidance and dismisses scientists and advisers, he’s clashed with top medical groups who say he’s not following the science.
The confrontation is deepening confusion among the public that had already surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Surveys show trust in the agencies Kennedy leads is falling, rather than rising, as the country’s health landscape undergoes dramatic change.
Kennedy says he’s aiming to boost transparency to empower Americans to make their own health choices. Doctors counter that the false and unverified information he’s promoting is causing major, perhaps irreversible, damage — and that if enough people forgo vaccination, it will cause a surge of illness and death.
There was a time when people trusted health agencies regardless of party and the government reported “the best of what science knows at this point,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Now, you cannot confidently go to federal websites and know that,” she said.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon argued that trust had suffered during the Biden administration. “Kennedy’s mandate is to restore transparency, scientific rigor, and accountability,” he said.
Trust slid during the COVID pandemic
Historically, federal scientific and public health agencies enjoyed strong ratings in public opinion polls. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for decades scored above many other government agencies in Gallup surveys that asked whether they were doing a “good” or “excellent” job.
Two decades ago, more than 60% of Americans gave the CDC high marks, according to Gallup. But that number fell dramatically at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, amid agency mistakes and guidance that some people didn’t like.
In 2020, the percentage of Americans who believed the CDC was doing at least a “good” job fell to 40% and then leveled off for the next few years.
Alix Ellis, a hairstylist and mom in Madison, Georgia, used to fully trust the CDC and other health agencies but lost that confidence during the COVID-19 pandemic. She said some of the guidance didn’t make sense. At her salon, for example, stylists could work directly on someone’s hair, but others in the room had to be several feet away.
“I’m not saying that we were lied to, but that is when I was like, OK, ‘Why are we doing this?’” the 35-year-old said.
Kennedy helped create the trust problem, doctor says
Part of Kennedy’s pitch as health secretary has been restoring Americans’ trust in public health.
“We’re going to 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,” Kennedy told senators last September, while explaining how he intended to make the CDC’s information reliable. “It’s the only way to restore trust in the agency — by making it trustworthy.”
Before entering politics, Kennedy was one of the loudest voices spreading false information about immunizations. Now, he’s trying to fix a trust problem he helped create, said Dr. Rob Davidson, a Michigan emergency physician.
“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,” said Davidson, who runs a doctor group called the Committee to Protect Health Care. “It’s upside-down.”
Kennedy has wielded the power of his office to take multiple steps that diverge from medical consensus.
Last May, he announced COVID-19 vaccines were no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women, a move doctors called concerning and confusing.
In November, he directed the CDC to abandon its position that vaccines do not cause autism, without supplying new evidence. And earlier this year, the CDC under his leadership reduced the number of vaccines recommended for every child, a decision medical groups said would undermine protections against a half-dozen diseases.
Kennedy also has overhauled his department through canceled grants and mass layoffs. Last summer, Kennedy fired his new CDC chief after less than a month over disagreements about vaccine policy.
Confusion emerges as trust erodes
Some have applauded the moves. But surveys suggest many Americans have had the opposite reaction.
“I have much less trust,” said Mark Rasmussen, a 67-year-old retiree walking into a mall in Danbury, Connecticut, one recent morning.
Shocked by Kennedy’s dismantling of public health norms, professional medical groups have urged Americans not to follow new vaccine recommendations they say were adopted without public input or compelling evidence.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, along with more than 200 public health and advocacy groups, urged Congress to investigate how and why Kennedy changed the vaccine schedule. The American Medical Association, working with the University of Minnesota’s Vaccine Integrity Project, this week announced a new evidence-based process for reviewing the safety of respiratory virus vaccines — something they say is needed since the government stopped doing that kind of systematic review.
Many Democratic-led states also have rebuffed Kennedy’s policies, even creating their own alliances to counter his vaccine guidance.
“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.
She said she worried the confusion was contributing to the recent rise in diseases like whooping cough and measles, which were once largely eliminated in the U.S.
Surveys indicate growing public wavering over support for the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. Although a large majority of people support giving it to children, the proportion declined significantly in just over nine months, according to Annenberg research. An August 2025 survey finds that 82% would be “very” or “somewhat” likely to recommend that an eligible child in their household get MMR vaccine, compared with 90% in November 2024.
Surveys show trust is declining again
New findings from the healthcare research nonprofit KFF in January show that 47% of Americans trust the CDC “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to provide reliable vaccine information, down about 10 percentage points since the beginning of Trump’s second term.
Trust among Democrats dropped 9 percentage points since September, to 55%, the survey found. Trust among Republicans and independents hasn’t changed since September, but it has declined somewhat among both groups since the beginning of Trump’s term.
Even among MAHA supporters, the poll shows, fewer than half say they trust agencies like the CDC and FDA “a lot” or “some” to make recommendations about childhood vaccine schedules.
Gallup surveys also show a drop in Americans who believe the CDC is doing a “good job,” from 40% in 2024 to 31% last year.
Those results came alongside a decline of trust across the government — not just agencies under Kennedy’s oversight. Yet concerns about Kennedy’s trustworthiness also have emerged in the past year. Documents recently obtained by The Associated Press and The Guardian, for example, undermine his statements that a 2019 trip to Samoa ahead of a measles outbreak had “nothing to do with vaccines.” The documents have prompted senators to assert that Kennedy lied to them over the visit.
HHS officials say they are promoting independent decision-making by families while working to reduce preventable diseases. They say reducing routine vaccine recommendations was meant to ensure parents vaccinate children against the riskiest diseases.
HHS did not make Kennedy available for an interview, despite repeated requests. But as he has pledged to restore trust, he’s also urged people to come to their own conclusions.
“This idea that you should trust the experts,” Kennedy said recently on The Katie Miller Podcast, “a good mother doesn’t do that.”
