by: Abby Coven
Local Editor

The second term of the Trump administration marked the most significant resurgence of measles in three decades. The current spike is projected to be the highest in all history. Republican-led states are weakening school vaccine mandates, emphasizing “medical freedom” and parental choice over established public health guidance. These policies have created regions of undervaccination where measles can spread rapidly even though the U.S. officially “eliminated” the disease in 2000. Partisanship has exacerbated the breakdown in our society’s longstanding consensus around public health. To win back the public, we must separate science from politics to ensure the safety of our nation. Trust will remain broken and lives will be tragically lost without institutional protections to keep the message consistent and the research independent.

Public health developed from early sanitation reforms like clean water and waste disposal to a science-based profession centered on microbiology and laboratories. Major achievements over the past century include widespread vaccination, leading to the eradication of smallpox, improved food safety like pasteurization, and greater infectious disease control through antibiotics.

Additionally, major health institutions emerged to coordinate responses to health threats. The World Health Organization (WHO) has a global purview of preventive medicine while the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are the leading national public health agencies in the U.S.

Yet, in spite of these remarkable advancements, a significant number of Americans have lost faith in the field of public health and related institutions. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study found that by “2025, a majority of Americans expressed low confidence in major institutions like the CDC and FDA, driven by perceptions that advice was politically influenced or failed to consider economic and social impacts.” Confidence in public health agencies and policies now fluctuates significantly based on political affiliation of the administration in charge, all of which is intensified by the overload of misinformation.

To attain a healthy society, we need to build back trust in nonpartisan frameworks on public health when making important medical decisions. Reliance on science-based and data-driven public health cannot be rebuilt without structural protections that keep scientific expertise separated from political interference. Legislating merit-based leadership in public health agencies, oversight and whistleblower bodies, utilizing nontraditional messengers like faith leaders and local clinicians, and normalizing uncertainty inherent in scientific evolution are potential approaches.

Politicians’ increasing distrust in medical science and promotion of misinformation is having severe consequences on our nation’s health. Without institutional safeguards that keep science insulated from politics, we will not be able to reverse this trend.

(Sources: APHA, KFF, Pew Research)