How healthcare has changed in Trump's first 100 days

In its first 100 days, the Trump administration has made several decisions that have had significant impacts on the healthcare industry.

For example, HHS has eliminated more than 20,000 jobs, including many in CDC's injury-prevention programs, CDC's lead poisoning prevention office, and CDC's worker safety center, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). However, the Trump administration has since temporarily reinstated dozens of NIOSH workers.

Staff at CDC who worked on reproductive health were also among those laid off. The staff administered PRAMS, a state-based surveillance system that collects data on maternal behaviors, attitudes, and experiences before, during, and after pregnancy to improve health outcomes for mothers and infants. The staff also worked on contraception guidelines that detailed safe and effective use of contraception for a variety of medical conditions that could make pregnancy more dangerous.

In addition, NIH has been ordered to terminate hundreds of research grants, including for research on vaccine hesitancy and transgender health, as they clash with the Trump administration's priorities.

For his part, Kennedy has pledged to phase out synthetic food dyes, increase oversight of food additives, and has launched a "massive testing and research effort" to determine what has caused the rise in autism rates.

In April, a leaked preliminary HHS budget suggested the Trump administration is aiming to cut the department's spending by roughly a third and massively reorganize the department. The budget also proposed creating a $20 billion agency called the Administration for a Healthy America that would include pieces of other agencies that are being consolidated, including those focused on primary care, environmental health, and HIV.

President Trump also announced a 10% baseline tariff on all foreign nations and reciprocal tariffs on several different countries who he said were engaging in unfair trade practices. A week later, President Trump implemented a 90-day pause on the reciprocal tariffs while increasing tariffs on China to 145%, which in turn prompted China to increase its import tax to 125%.

The poll also found that 44% of Americans said having new leaders in charge of federal public health agencies will make them trust health recommendations coming from those organizations less than they used to, while 28% said they will trust recommendations more.

Those results were sharply divided among partisan lines, with 57% of Republicans saying that having new leaders in charge of federal public health agencies will make them trust those organization's health recommendations more compared to just 6% of Democrats.

Most Americans said that CDC will function worse than it has in recent years, but once again, responses were divided among partisan lines, with 80% of Republicans saying CDC will function better and 83% of Democrats saying it will function worse.

Among respondents who said CDC will function worse in the next four years than it has in recent years, the agency making health recommendations influenced by politics was the most common concern This was followed by concerns that CDC would scale back or cut programs too much and that it would downplay important health problems like infectious disease outbreaks.

Meanwhile, among respondents who said that CDC will function better in the next four years, a third said they were "very confident" CDC would reduce financial waste in the organization and 28% said CDC will make health recommendations based on "good research that has been ignored by prior leaders."

"New fault lines are emerging in trust for public health agencies," said Gillian SteelFisher, director of the Harvard Opinion Research Program and lead on the survey. "More people are very concerned than very hopeful about what agencies will be able to do in the next few years and more anticipate losing a lot of trust rather than gaining it. This suggests that if leaders want to grow trust, the American people will need to see more effort to sustain public health capacity than what they've seen so far."