Prescription for Division—Healing the Growing Gap in Physician Trust

In the nearly 50 years that Gallup has queried the public about trust in professions, 2025 has broken new ground and overall trust in physicians has never been lower. Between 2019 and 2024, trust in physicians decreased by 12 percentage points, even after a surge in 2020.1 The pattern of decline reveals social and economic fault lines; trust has fallen most among people without a college degree, who are overwhelmingly Republican. Between 2019 and 2024, trust in physicians decreased by 13 percentage points among those who have not attended college compared with 9 percentage points among those with a college degree. Only 44% of Republicans have high/very high trust in physicians compared with 65% of Democrats. The news is not all bad. Physicians are still more trusted than most professionals. Television reporters, members of Congress, and lobbyists rank particularly low; trust in judges and members of the clergy has dropped the most since 2000. Nurses continue to be ranked as the most trusted profession, which has been true for a quarter century.1 People need medical advice from someone they find credible. When trust in physicians decreases, other sources of information fill the void. According to data provided by the authors of a recent survey, when queried who they trust to provide reliable vaccine information, Republicans in roughly equal shares trust “a great deal” in President Donald Trump (35%), Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr (27%), and their personal physician (32%). In contrast, 56% of Democrats say they trust their personal physician, 1% say Trump, and 2% say Kennedy. The partisan divide could not be starker