By Leah Douglas and Jason Lange
WASHINGTON, Feb 25 (Reuters) – A bipartisan majority of Americans believe vaccines are safe and that children should receive them to attend school, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, illustrating the challenges President Donald Trump’s administration faces to win broad support for upending decades of health policy.
The six-day poll, which closed on Monday, comes as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has led the U.S. government to drop recommendations for several childhood immunizations and boosted federal support for states providing exemptions to vaccine mandates, such as for school attendance.
Some 84% of respondents, including 92% of Democrats and 81% of Republicans, said vaccines for diseases like measles, mumps and rubella are safe for children.
Seventy-four percent said the government should require healthy children to be vaccinated to attend school, with 23% saying unvaccinated children should be allowed in schools. Nearly all U.S. states mandate vaccination for school enrollment, with some limited exemptions.
TRUMP’S MAHA PUSH
Trump has embraced many of Kennedy’s priorities and those of his followers, organized under the Make America Healthy Again movement, which promotes fewer vaccines and healthier eating, among other policies.
Public health experts have said weakening school vaccine mandates would result in more children being sickened by preventable diseases.
“Having vaccine requirements keeps schools safe, and we know they work. If they are rolled back, we will see vaccine rates fall, and unfortunately, we will see kids suffer,” said Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases.
Views of Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, skew along partisan lines. Overall, some 37% of respondents said they view him favorably and 52% unfavorably. By party affiliation, 72% of Republicans gave him a thumbs up, with just 12% of Democrats saying the same.
The poll shows stronger support for federal efforts to tackle unhealthy eating habits than to reduce the number of recommended childhood vaccinations.
Two-thirds of respondents said it is a good idea for the government to do more to discourage unhealthy eating, while just 29% supported reducing the number of recommended vaccines for children.
SKEPTICISM OF MANDATES
The poll showed division among Republicans on vaccine mandates and the number of shots given to children.
Two-thirds of self-identified Republicans said they backed vaccine mandates in schools, while nine in 10 Democrats backed mandates.
Asked if they agreed with a statement “children in the United States today are given too many vaccines they do not actually need,” 55% of Republicans said yes, compared to 44% who disagreed, while 81% of Democrats disagreed.
States determine which vaccines are required to attend school. Religious or personal exemptions to vaccine mandates are allowed by 46 states and Washington, D.C., according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
MAHA groups are working in as many as a dozen states this year to bar school vaccine mandates, buoyed by Kennedy’s overhaul of federal vaccine policy.
A leadership shuffle underway at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has seen the departure of top officials, including principal deputy director Ralph Abraham, who in his prior role as Surgeon General of the state of Louisiana moved to stop promotion of mass vaccination. The agency this month postponed a federal vaccine advisory board meeting to March.
BIG FOOD AND BIG PHARMA TARGETED
Kennedy has been critical of practices of both major food producers and big pharmaceutical companies. The poll shows support for curbing the influence of large food companies on federal policy.
Some 77% of respondents said big food companies are harming the health of Americans, while 60% said as much about pharmaceutical companies.
Sixty-seven percent of Democrats and 73% of Republican respondents said it was a good idea for the federal government to discourage unhealthy eating.
Kennedy has been promoting his ideas for healthier eating, including new dietary guidelines released in January that advise Americans to consume less sugar, and a policy of limiting people on food stamps from purchasing junk food.
He also has pushed food companies to cut artificial dyes from their products.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online, surveyed 4,638 U.S. adults nationwide and had a margin of error of two percentage points.
(Reporting by Leah Douglas and Jason Lange in Washington; additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Scott Malone and Bill Berkrot)
