After a year of major shifts in the federal government\u2019s policy toward vaccines, Americans are now more likely to trust the American Medical Association than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when the two conflict on vaccine guidance, a new survey shows. <\/p>\n
The survey, conducted by the <\/a>University of Pennsylvania<\/a>\u2019s Annenberg Public Policy Center, is one of several released in December that assess how the public is navigating a chaotic year of public health policy under President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s administration. <\/p>\n Trump\u2019s secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a longtime anti-vaccine activist. Earlier in 2025, he fired a committee of outside experts who advise the CDC on vaccine policy, replacing the committee with a handpicked group that includes other vaccine critics<\/a>. <\/p>\n Soon after, the White House fired CDC Director Susan Monarez, in part because she had refused to unquestioningly sign off on the new committee\u2019s recommendations<\/a>. <\/p>\n The reconstituted panel subsequently changed recommendations on who should receive COVID-19 vaccines, prompting states like Pennsylvania<\/a> to change their own policies around vaccine distribution to ensure continued access. The panel also recommended delaying hepatitis B shots for newborns<\/a>, prompting outrage from medical experts who said the move will increase cases of the serious liver disease.<\/p>\n And in November, the CDC website, which for years had noted that decades of research showed no link between receiving vaccines and developing autism, was updated to state the opposite. The site now reads: \u201cThe claim \u2018vaccines do not cause autism\u2019 is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.\u201d<\/p>\n The move was decried by public health experts.<\/a><\/p>\n In the wake of those decisions, it is crucial for medical providers and health communicators to understand how the public views vaccination, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Annenberg\u2019s director.<\/p>\n Kennedy\u2019s guidance often encourages patients to make their own decisions with doctors about vaccines, she said. But that often puts the burden on Americans to process scientific research on their own \u2014 and makes them vulnerable to misinformation, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe public doesn\u2019t have time to do research on its own, on average, and in the process, they can get lost in a mire of misinformation and confusion very easily. It requires a skill set to navigate scholarly literature. And it\u2019s easy to think one is doing one\u2019s research when one is way down the rabbit hole,\u201d Jamieson said.<\/p>\n Autism, vaccines, and trust in the CDC<\/p>\n Annenberg researchers wanted to understand where the public is turning for information on vaccines as trust in the CDC has fallen. <\/p>\n Shortly after the CDC changed its website on vaccines and autism, Annenberg researchers asked 1,006 adults about what they would do if the CDC\u2019s advice conflicted with that of a major medical professional organization like the AMA, which strongly condemned the website changes<\/a>. <\/p>\n While about half of the respondents said they believe the CDC provides trustworthy information on vaccine safety, the survey found that 35% of respondents said they would be more likely to accept recommendations from the AMA if they conflicted with the CDC. Just 16% of respondents said they would side with the CDC in that case.<\/p>\n That preference held true across political parties and was particularly pronounced among older Americans. The only age group more likely to accept the CDC over the AMA was 18- to 29-year-olds: 24% said they would accept the CDC\u2019s recommendations, and 19% said they would accept the AMA\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that, as the CDC began to change statements, the public shifted its trust to other organizations on consequential issues \u2014 that\u2019s a statement that says the public intelligence is real,\u201d Jamieson said. <\/p>\n \u201cThe public is paying enough attention to say, \u2018I can\u2019t necessarily go to the CDC on that topic.\u2019 That\u2019s a statement that says we\u2019re in better shape than you might have guessed that we were.\u201d <\/p>\n Gauging public knowledge on vaccines<\/p>\n In another series of surveys, Annenberg researchers gauged what Americans already know about common vaccines in order to help public health officials communicate with the public more effectively.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the goals of our surveying is to find what kinds of knowledge the public finds helpful and increase the likelihood that people make science-consistent decisions,\u201d Jamieson said.<\/p>\n A survey on whooping cough, also known as pertussis, was conducted in the fall in response to a national rise in cases<\/a>. The disease is caused by a bacterial infection and can result in a severe cough that lasts for months. It is particularly dangerous for infants, especially those too young to be vaccinated against the disease.<\/p>\n About 30% of 1,637 respondents said they were not sure whether pertussis was the same as whooping cough and 35% said they were not sure whether a vaccine exists for it. Annenberg had reported similar findings a year before<\/a> \u2014 an alarming conclusion, researchers said, because health officials have blamed a rise in cases in part on decreasing vaccination rates.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe we\u2019re not doing the best possible job in communicating what we know about relative risks of the disease, the relative risks of vaccine, and the ways in which whooping cough is transmitted,\u201d Jamieson said. \u201cThese are all questions designed to figure out the equation people are working through.\u201d<\/p>\n Support for measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine<\/p>\n Likewise, a late-fall survey on attitudes toward the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR) found that 86% of respondents said they would be likely to recommend that eligible people in their household get the MMR vaccine. <\/p>\n