VOLUME 21
April 24, 2025
Irving Washington, Hagere Yilma, and Joel Luther
This Monitor shares new findings from the latest KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust and examines the false promotion of budesonide and clarithromycin for treating measles. It also explores misrepresentations of safe syringe programs and how prompting strategies can improve accuracy of AI chatbots when answering health-related questions.
As the U.S. faces rising measles cases across multiple states and the highest number of cases since 2019, the latest KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust finds that most adults – including most parents – say they have heard at least one of several false claims about measles or the vaccine used to prevent it. About six in ten adults (63%) and a similar share of parents (61%) say they have read or heard the false claim that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines have been proven to cause autism in children and one in five adults and similar shares of parents (17%) have heard the false claim that vitamin A can prevent measles infections. One in three adults (33%) say they have heard or read the false claim that the measles vaccines are more dangerous than being infected with measles, an increase of 15 percentage points from March 2024.
While fewer than 5% of adults say they think each claim is...
The administration of United States President Donald Trump has installed a right-wing researcher who pushed false claims about the 2020 election to a position in charge of election oversight. As o...