Spring 2026 – Pennsylvania Public Health Survey

Muhlenberg College Public Health Program – 2026 Pennsylvania Health Survey

PDF: Muhlenberg College Public Health Program – 2026 Pennsylvania Health Survey

The following report examines opinions regarding public health issues in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 2026. The report provides an overview of key findings from the 2026 Pennsylvania Health Survey. The survey was conducted in the Spring of 2026 by the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion (MCIPO) in conjunction with the Muhlenberg College Public Health program.

Key Findings

1. Pennsylvanians expressed lower levels of satisfaction with the quality of health care in the state than in any year since 2019, with 50% rating health care in the state as excellent or good and 45% choosing ratings of fair or poor. The 50% positive rating is the lowest since this question was first asked in 2019 and down 20 points since the 2024 survey when 70% of Pennsylvanians provided excellent or good ratings.

2. Affordability of health care was identified a key hinderance to health care access for a significant number of Commonwealth households with over 1 out of 4 adult Pennsylvanians indicating that in the past year someone in their household had difficulty accessing health care due to cost.

3. When asked to name the greatest threat to public health in Pennsylvania today, 21% of respondents identified the cost of/access to health care as their primary concern. The second largest number of respondents, 9%, named President Trump, RFK Jr. or Republicans as the greatest threat to public health.

4. A majority of Keystone State residents expressed a lack of trust in Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s ability to handle health care issues, with 57% of survey respondents expressing “not too much” or “ no trust at all” in Kennedy.

5. Politics and current events are an increasingly significant cause of stress for Pennsylvanians with 44% of adults in the state reporting that these events are a major source of stress in their lives. The 44% mark is 12 points higher than this time in 2025 when 32% of commonwealth residents identified politics and current events as a major life stressor.

6. Acceptance of the unsubstantiated link between child immunizations and autism continues to rise among Pennsylvanians with 37% of residents indicating that they either “strongly” or “somewhat: agree with this relationship. The 37% mark is the highest in the 14 year history of the survey and 25 points higher than in 2021 when only 11% of commonwealth residents agreed with the unproven connection between immunizations and autism.

7. As the role of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to grow in aspects of life including health care, only 6% of adults in Pennsylvania indicated they had “a lot” of trust in chatbots such as ChatGPT to provide accurate medical diagnoses and treatment recommendations.

8. A record number of Commonwealth residents identified climate change as a crisis with 44% of adults in Pennsylvania now saying this matter is a crisis, up 15 points from 2023. Views on climate change are dramatically different across partisan divides with 66% of Democrats identifying climate change as a crisis compared to only 12% of Republicans sharing this view.

9. As controversies around data centers have played out in many Commonwealth communities in 2026, 1 in 5 residents of the state identified these entities as a crisis, with additional 43% indicating data centers pose a problem but are not a crisis. 1 in 5 Pennsylvanians stated that data centers are not a problem facing the state.

10. Support for full legalization of marijuana in Pennsylvania continues to be about twice the level of opposition to this option, with 47% of adults in support of legalization compared to 25% opposing legalization. Notably the percentage of Pennsylvanians that are neutral about this policy option has doubled since 2020, with about one quarter (24%) of Pennsylvanians neither favoring or opposing legalization in 2026 compared to only 12% that held this view 6 years ago.

METHODOLOGY

This report provides results of a telephone survey of 500 adult residents of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Interviews were conducted between March 10 and March 17, 2026. Respondents were interviewed in English on both landlines (n=102) and cell phones (n = 398). The sample of Pennsylvania adults was randomly selected from a stratified dual frame of cell and landline telephone numbers in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania provided by Communications Concepts of Easton Pennsylvania. In order to reach a representative sample of Pennsylvania adult residents, landlines and cell phones were called up to 3 times. Interviews were conducted by live interviewers from Communication Concepts. To assure that individuals were currently adult residents of Pennsylvania interviewers confirmed residency in the state and that the respondent was 18 years of age or older. The sampling procedure is designed to be inclusive of all adult Pennsylvanians but may not account for individuals living in the Commonwealth with cell phone numbers not included in the sample frame employed in the study. With a randomly selected sample of respondents the margin of error for the survey is +/- 5.5% at a 95% level of confidence. Margins of error for questions with smaller sample size will be larger. In addition to sampling error, one should consider that question wording and other fielding issues can introduce error or bias into survey results.

The data has been weighted to gender, age, race, and educational attainment to 2026 population parameters for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania provided by the United States Census Bureau. The calculation of sampling error takes into account design effects due to the weighting of the sample to the population parameters identified above. Due to rounding, the totals provided in the frequency report may not total 100 percent. Data analysis and weighting were conducted through the use of the SPSS statistical software package Version 29.0. Coding of open-ended responses for Question Three in the instrument was completed by two human coders on the staff of the Institute of Public Opinion. As part of the effort to ensure data quality a random sample of 11 respondents to the survey were recontacted by staff from the Institute of Public Opinion to confirm that they had completed the survey on the date provided by Communication Concepts.

The survey instrument was designed by Dr. Christopher P. Borick, MCIPO Executive Director and Dr. Lindsay Burt, MCIPO Managing Director in conjunction with the staff of the MCIPO and Muhlenberg College Public Health program and is presented in its entirety in the following section of the report. The survey was funded exclusively by Muhlenberg College. For more detailed information on the methods employed please contact the MCIPO at 484-664-3444 or email Dr. Borick at [email protected].