Public Health Education Opportunity Knocks for Providers

One running gag among my close family and friends is that I’m the founder of an organization called the People Are Stupid Club. I founded the club in November 2016 after nearly 63 million people voted for Cheeto Jesus for president. Shortly into his first term, the club spawned two working groups under the People Are Stupid corporate umbrella: “How Stupid Are You?” and “A New Kind of Stupid.”

Membership in the two working groups has swelled in Cheeto Jesus’ second stint as president. At least 77 million people are in the former working group, as they voted for a convicted felon for president. The latter is for those who drink raw milk and end up in the hospital or harm their own kids by not getting them vaccinated against potentially deadly communicable diseases. Now that’s a new kind of stupid.

My club doesn’t have a mission, vision or value statement. But if it did, skepticism bordering on cynicism would be pretty close. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve done more than my share of stupid things in my life. The list is pretty long. But at 66, I’d like to think I learned from them and won’t make similar poor decisions.

All that said, a new report from the de Beaumont Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health gives me hope that we can recover from all this stupidity, at least in public health, if healthcare providers are willing to rise to the occasion.

The report is based on a survey of 2,205 U.S. adults ages 18 and older. This year’s survey is a follow-up to a similar survey the two sponsors conducted about the same time last year. I wrote about the results of the 2025 survey in this monthly column, “In Public Health We Trust. Or Not.”

Here’s how a year’s worth of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vax, anti-science, politically motivated, dogma-driven and MAHA-inspired stint as HHS Secretary under Cheeto Jesus has affected consumers’ opinions of public health in the U.S.:

• Only 50% of this year’s respondents said they trusted “a great deal” or “somewhat” in public health recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That’s down sharply from 77% in 2025.
• Trust in public health recommendations from state health departments also dropped to 66% from 80%.
• Trust in public health recommendations from local health departments also dropped to 70% from 82%.

That makes the most trusted public institution for public health recommendations your local health department, not the federal government.

Who do consumers trust most with public health? Nurses, doctors and pharmacists at 89%, 88% and 85%, respectively, according to the new survey. Only 59% trust the U.S. surgeon general, whoever it is under this administration. That says something.

Also noteworthy:

• 55% of consumers said they disapprove of actions by federal public health agencies under the Trump administration, with only 37% saying those actions have positively affected the health of the average American.
• 68% said they “strongly” or “somewhat” agree that recommendations from federal public health leaders are influenced too much by their personal beliefs rather than medical science.
• 77% said parents should be required to vaccinate their children against preventable diseases to attend school.
• 58% said they oppose the new watered-down recommended childhood vaccine schedule from the CDC with 89% saying routine childhood vaccines are “very” or “somewhat” safe.

Taken together, “These national poll findings show concerning declines in the American public’s trust in federal health agencies one year into the new federal administration,” the report said.

Yeah, I’d say so.

The findings also reveal the incredible opportunity healthcare providers and provider groups have to fill the void in public health education. As I’ve repeatedly said before, it’s time for the market to step up and give consumers the public health information they need to stay healthy or be as healthy as possible.

Most people aren’t stupid. They just need someone smart like a nurse, a doctor or a pharmacist to tell them what they should do.

Thanks for reading.