Higher trust in public health agencies during COVID-19 driven more by beliefs that agencies led with clear, science-based recommendations and provided protective resources, than by beliefs that agencies controlled outbreak

In the first nationally representative survey of U.S. adults on reasons for trust in federal, state, and local public health agencies’ information during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and colleagues found that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was highly trusted for information by more than one-third of U.S. adults, whereas state and local health departments were highly trusted by about one-quarter. An additional 37-51% of adults trusted these public health agencies somewhat, and <10% reported no trust at all in these agencies for health information.