The trust gap between physicians and federal health agencies has doubled since 2024

Americans' confidence in their own doctor, nurse or other primary care provider (PCP) held at 87% in August, statistically unchanged from 88% in September 2024, according to a national survey the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) at the University of Pennsylvania released Aug. 31.

Confidence that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provide the public with trustworthy information about public health fell over the same two years, from between 72% and 74% to between 59% and 61%.

That leaves 26 to 28 percentage points between how Americans rate their own clinician and how they rate the three agencies. In September 2024, the spread was 14 to 16 points.

"It is critical for the public to have a reliable source for health care information," Ken Winneg, Ph.D., APPC's managing director of survey research, said in the release, "so it's a relief to see high and consistent trust in their personal health care providers."

Where the agency numbers moved

The share of adults saying they are very confident in the CDC fell to 13% in August from 29% in September 2024. Very confident in the FDA fell to 11% from 23%, and in the NIH to 12% from 27%. The somewhat confident tier barely moved, landing at 48% for all three in August, compared with 43%, 49% and 47% two years ago.

A separate survey found that Americans trust the American Medical Association more than the CDC on vaccine safety.

APPC's survey was in the field Aug. 4-17 among 1,904 U.S. adults. The two-year window it spans covers near-continuous leadership change at the three agencies it asked about.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed in February 2025. CDC Director Susan Monarez, Ph.D., was fired that August, and Debra Houry, M.D., M.P.H., the agency's deputy director and chief medical officer, resigned.

Vinay Prasad, M.D., the FDA's vaccine and biologics chief, left in April after Commissioner Marty Makary, M.D., told staff in March that he would depart. Makary resigned in May amid a dispute over the administration's authorization of fruit-flavored e-cigarettes, which he opposed, The New York Times reported, and the FDA has had no Senate-confirmed commissioner since.

Erica Schwartz, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., was confirmed as CDC director Aug. 5 on a 51-44 vote, and President Donald Trump nominated Heidi Overton, M.D., deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, to run the FDA on Aug. 19. She has not yet had a confirmation hearing.

"We don't see evidence in our data that the Trump administration is restoring trust in the federal health agencies," said Laura A. Gibson, Ph.D., an APPC research analyst.

Kennedy has said otherwise. At a Tampa, Florida, elementary school Aug. 26, he told reporters that "we are actually restoring faith in the public health agencies so people will take our advice, and our advice is that people should get the measles vaccination," according to Florida Phoenix.

Since the survey closed, Kennedy asked Schwartz to remove a reference to two Pennsylvania measles deaths from the CDC's online tally after questioning whether measles contributed to them, Reuters reported Sept. 3, citing three people familiar with the situation.

The agency's most recent update omitted the deaths and added a note saying available information does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to them.

Makary offered a different reading of the earlier APPC findings while he was still commissioner. Asked Dec. 4, 2025, by NBC News' Anne Thompson about the 2025 drop in trust in the FDA, he pointed to a 2024 JAMA Network Open study led by Roy H. Perlis, M.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital, which found trust in physicians and hospitals fell from 71.5% in April 2020 to 40.1% in January 2024.

APPC notes that decline was predominantly during the COVID-19 pandemic and that trust in PCPs runs flat from 2023 on in both its own dataset and the one Perlis and colleagues drew from.

"It is concerning to see the gap between confidence in the federal public health agencies and confidence in health care providers double over the course of 2025 and not recover since," said Patrick E. Jamieson, Ph.D., director of APPC's Annenberg Health and Risk Communication Institute, which oversees the health surveys.

What the gap looks like in the exam room

Physicians reporting a moderate or major impact from misinformation on their ability to provide quality care rose to 65% this year from 57% in 2025, according to The Physicians Foundation's survey: “The Erosion of Trust in American Health Care: How Health Misinformation Is Changing the Patient-Physician Relationship,” an online survey of 1,002 U.S. physicians fielded March 4-18, 2026.

The share encountering patients influenced by misinformation a moderate amount or a great deal over the past year rose to 69% from 61%. Among primary care physicians, 70% reported a moderate or major impact on care, compared with 61% of specialists.

Rural physicians reported encountering misinformation-influenced patients more often than urban physicians, 78% compared with 67%.

"There's an overarching concern that perhaps the most consequential impact of health misinformation is the erosion of trust in the patient-physician relationship," Gary Price, M.D., MBA, president of The Physicians Foundation, told Chief Healthcare Executive, a sister publication of Medical Economics.

One in three physicians (34%) reported very often or often experiencing a breakdown of trust with patients because of misinformation, and 31% reported increased conflict during visits.

Nearly half (49%) reported medication or treatment nonadherence tied to misinformation, 45% reported patients refusing recommended care and 66% reported increased patient anxiety. Another 34% said it contributes to emergency room and urgent care overuse.

"Patients in general, based on other studies that have been done recently, still regard their physician or other primary care clinician as the most trusted source for health information," Price said. "But of course, in my mind, that raises my concern even more about what this erosion of trust in the physician-patient encounter is going to do to that."

Physicians are naming the agencies, too

Government health agencies often or very often contribute to the misinformation patients bring into the exam room, 28% of physicians told the foundation. Among primary care physicians the figure was 33%, compared with 25% of specialists, and 6% named the agencies the single most significant driver.

Social media dominated both questions, with 85% calling it a frequent contributor and 48% naming it the single biggest driver, more than 2.5 times the next answer, influencers at 17%. Word of mouth followed at 74% and 12%, then news coverage at 58% and search engines at 57%.

Artificial intelligence chatbots ranked near the bottom, cited by 33% as a frequent contributor and 3% as the single biggest driver. Price flagged the timeliness: "The study was done in March, not that long ago, although a lot of the public discussion about AI has gone on since then," he said. "So is this a timing question, or is it that AI and chatbot sources aren't causing a lot of conflict between physicians and patients? I think we don't know."

The time to have the conversation

A third of physicians (34%) said they are not at all confident they have the necessary time to engage patients skeptical of modern medicine. Just 26% said they are confident or very confident they have the tools and support for those conversations, and 43% have no confidence their patients know how to find reliable, evidence-based health information online.

"Physicians, particularly employed physicians, who have very rapidly become the majority of physicians in the United States recently, they are feeling a real crunch in time in that they generally feel like they're being asked to see more patients with less time, and it's a source of frustration and burnout for them," Price said, adding that independent physicians are feeling it as well.

He described the result as a vicious cycle layered onto an access problem: "our health care system is overburdened, and we don't have enough primary care physicians to take care of our country's needs."

What still works

"We know that just confronting misinformation or disinformation with a lot of facts isn't really the best way to try to deal with it," Price said. "It's building that trust between physician and patient and other sources of information."

That means staying non-judgmental, he said, and also making the recommendation plainly.

"Sometimes physicians can, in trying to be so even-handed, I think sometimes they can fail to do that, and they're even afraid to sometimes," Price said. Patients, he added, "want the benefit of our experience and judgment, and we have an obligation, very clearly, to make sure we share that with the patient."

"Physicians are in a unique position to maintain that trust and to use it to help their patients get better health outcomes," Price said, "but we have to realize that that trust is threatened, and that alone isn't going to be enough to address the issue we have with health misinformation out there in social media."