The new data on Americans’ perceptions of public health issues comes as the Trump administration is seeking to set its health agenda.
Survey respondents polled between Dec. 2 and Dec. 15 were asked to choose their top three public health issues from a list of 15 they thought should get the highest priority from government leaders.
A quarter of respondents said improving health access and affordability was their top concern, 18% said ensuring safe food and water was most critical and 11% listed reducing chronic disease as most pressing.
Nearly 3 in 10 respondents said strengthening safety-net programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and free health clinics, should be one of the nation’s top three priorities. Democrats were more likely than Republicans to list preserving safety-net programs as their top concern.
Some public health issues highlighted by Trump’s top healthcare nominees, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., were ranked as lower priorities for Americans.
Although senators and some health policy experts have lambasted Kennedy, who was nominated for HHS secretary, over his skepticism of vaccine efficacy, Gallup found that few Americans listed childhood vaccination as their top public health issue, and just over 10% said it was one of their top three concerns.
And, although the Trump administration has made restricting abortion access a priority, only 13% of respondents said preserving access to reproductive healthcare was among their top three public health concerns.
Instead, Gallup said respondents showed some alignment with the “Make America Healthy Again” movement promoted by President Donald Trump and Kennedy — particularly Republican respondents. Nearly a quarter of Republicans listed ensuring safe food and water as their top priority, which the consultancy said corresponded to Kennedy’s priorities.
The survey also polled respondents’ top sources for trusted health information. Across groups, respondents rated their healthcare providers, followed by scientific research and the CDC as their most trusted sources. However, trust varied by demographics.
Younger adults ranked information received from scientific studies as slightly more trustworthy than information received from their doctors, while adults 65 and older ranked information received from their healthcare provider significantly more trustworthy than the CDC or academic studies.
Democrats were also more likely to privilege information gleaned from the CDC above their provider. Republicans, meanwhile, listed their top sources of information as healthcare providers, scientific research, family and friends, and medical websites. Democrats were relatively unlikely to list friends as a trusted source for health information.
The trust divide could deepen as a result of recent actions by the Trump administration, Stephen Patrick, professor and chair of the department of health policy and management at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, told Healthcare Dive over email.
The administration has ordered a pullback of new scientific papers and several CDC pages referencing gender identity and LGBTQ+ issues have been purged. “The recent actions by the Administration towards CDC are worrisome. One of the nation’s most trusted public health publications, the [Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report], has not been published since January 16th – its first lapse in 60 years,” Patrick said. “All of these moves are concerning… Americans need a CDC that communicates public health issues – from the latest E. Coli outbreak, to changes in birth outcomes. Certainly these steps do not bring us closer to closing the trust divide we observed.”