VOLUME 15
January 30, 2025
This is Irving Washington and Hagere Yilma. We direct KFF’s Health Misinformation and Trust Initiative and on behalf of all of our colleagues across KFF who work on misinformation and trust we are pleased to bring you this edition of our bi-weekly Monitor.
This volume shares key findings from the latest KFF Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust, along with updates from Robert Kennedy Jr.’s senate hearings. We also examine narratives that reflect distrust in public health messaging about bird flu, motivations for sharing information online, and how fraudulent research can sometimes inform AI chatbot models.
KFF’s latest Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust shows declining public trust in key government health agencies with divisions along partisan lines, a continuation of a trend beginning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Compared to KFF polling from June 2023, fewer adults now say they have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in the CDC (from 66% to 61% in the latest poll), FDA (from 65% to 53%), or their state and local public health officials (from 64% to 54%) to make the right recommendations when it comes to health issues. Trust in government health agencies is divided along partisan lines, with Republicans far less likely than Democrats and independents to say they trust each of these agencies. On the other hand,...
Legislators in Sacramento, California, are mulling over one of the most (if not the most) troubling state and local tax bills of the past decade. Senate Bill (SB) 799, introduced earlier this year...