The FDA has work to do to earn the confidence of certain groups of people who do not trust the agency, a study published Friday by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Colorado School of Medicine found. But how exactly the FDA will win that trust remains an open question.
The results of the survey of more than 2,000 Americans revealed that women, people in rural areas, conservatives, people with poor health, and people without children under the age of 18 were among those who were particularly skeptical of the FDA.
The survey’s findings come as the nonpartisan FDA is caught up in politics on a number of fronts, including the upcoming presidential election and multiple Supreme Court cases that would directly or indirectly affect the agency’s authority.
William Feldman“Our survey looked only at a snapshot in time, but I worry that trust in the FDA is becoming more politically polarized,” lead author William Feldman, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a researcher at the university’s Program On Regulation, Therapeutics And Law, said. “We observed, for example, substantially higher levels of trust among those with liberal political views compared to those with conservative political views.”
The survey also found that groups that had lower self-reported health showed lower satisfaction with the care they receive, and paid less attention to health and science news.
Researchers had respondents assign a trust score based on four areas — competence and effectiveness, commitment to acting in the best interest of the American public, abiding by policy and law, and expertise in health, science and medicine.
The paper concludes that the FDA should pursue strategies to target populations with low levels of trust and strengthen its own internal processes to minimize bias. It says more research, including focus groups with patients and community health leaders, will help determine how to target those groups.
As the paper notes, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf has cited improving trust in the FDA as a main policy goal. The researchers pointed to the FDA’s ongoing efforts to thwart misinformation, saying that they’re valuable but could fall flat if not targeted to the right groups.