CDC Secretly Funded Pro-Vaccine Podcasts

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly helped fund pro-vaccine podcasts that appeared under the names of outside nonprofit organizations.

These were not balanced programs debating vaccine policy. Their stated purpose was to increase vaccine confidence, promote COVID-19 and flu shots and teach community groups how to persuade hesitant Americans.

The funding was disclosed—but largely in grant notices, episode footers and nonprofit reports that few ordinary listeners would ever read. Two broader CDC-funded projects connected to the shows received $5.755 million.

The taxpayer-backed episode lineup read like a vaccine-persuasion playbook: “Building Vaccine Trust in the Rural South,” “Nurses Turn Skepticism Into Action,” “Identifying Trusted Messengers,” and “Leveraging Nurse Volunteers to Combat Vaccine Misinformation.”