The Big Story: 2026 Drivers of Trust in Children’s Hospitals
Children’s hospitals are among the most trusted institutions in the healthcare ecosystem. Our recent survey looked at how trust can be turned into action – and discovered a powerful role for community impact.
Turning Trust into Action
By Tricia Geraghty
5-minute read
In 2025, Jarrard’s national survey of public perception about children’s hospitals found something rare in healthcare: deep public trust. The results were striking, especially in comparison to general acute care hospitals:
- Nearly eight in 10 Americans said they trust children’s hospitals with the health of children in their communities.
- Seventy-one percent said nonprofit children’s hospitals earn their tax-exempt status – a stark contrast with nonprofit hospitals in general whose results range from 33% to 51%.
- Seventy-five percent believe children’s hospitals are more motivated by caring for children than making money.
Most healthcare organizations would envy a children’s hospital’s stellar reputational scores. But children’s hospitals need more than good brands. The health and well-being of children depends on public support and activation, whether that comes in the form of philanthropy or advocacy. The task before today’s children’s hospital leader is to turn something that can be quite passive, “I love my children’s hospital and I hope they are always there when kids need them” into something active and powerful: “I am ready to stand up and fight for the health of kids in my community.”
With that in mind, our 2026 survey responds to the question: What turns trust into advocacy?
A trust and advocacy roadmap
This summer, our team dug deeper into the public’s views on children’s hospitals. We wanted to know, of the many features touted by these highly trusted institutions, where do they truly shine? Where might they have risks? And what would motivate people to speak up for children’s hospitals when policy changes, funding or public trust is on the line?
The stakes around public support are no longer theoretical. Federal and state policy debates are putting children’s hospitals’ funding, access and tax-exempt status under pressure at the same time families are relying on them for increasingly complex needs. Children’s hospitals rallied to preserve Children’s Hospital Graduate Medical Education funding and have done tremendous work at the state level to protect Medicaid funds for women and children. But the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (HR1) cut federal Medicaid funding by $1 trillion over the next decade, a significant slash to the primary source of coverage for the roughly four in 10 kids in this country.
More than ever, children’s hospitals need a map to take them on the two-lane road to a successful future: 1.) retaining and increasing trust from the public; and 2.) leveraging that trust for advocacy on behalf of their institutions.
Here are the signposts we found along the way:
First, what drives trust?
- Quality and expertise are the strongest drivers. Excellent care is the foundation for everything else, and 55% rated children’s hospitals as being excellent in quality and expertise. People who have had direct, personal experience with a children’s hospital rate the level of quality even higher. Consider this the table stakes of the reputation of a children’s hospital.
- Access and affordability are surprisingly high drivers of trust. Yet only 43% of the public rated the access and affordability that children’s hospitals provide as excellent. The inability to see a pediatric specialist in a timely way – or the challenge of affording one – is a key risk factor to watch in children’s hospitals’ long-term relationships with their communities.
- Compassionate care rounds out the trust equation. Families notice that the experience around the child and the family makes kids less afraid and makes complex care understandable.
While quality care and pediatric expertise cultivate trust, getting people to act on your behalf requires something more. Our study shows that community impact and community partnership are the best levers that children’s hospitals have to generate action.
By “community partnership,” we’re not talking sponsorships and ribbon cuttings. We’re talking about people seeing and experiencing the hospital working with others to address the conditions shaping children’s health – behavioral health, food insecurity, housing instability, access to specialists and financial barriers to care.
- When respondents strongly agree that children’s hospitals are good community partners, 69% are willing to speak positively about them, defend them if criticized and share supportive information on social media. That compares to just 43% among other respondents. That’s a 26-point jump in active voice.
- The survey shows that 68% of those who strongly see children’s hospitals as good community partners are willing to support increased public funding, sign petitions, support temporary tax measures and contact elected officials – compared to 44% among all others, a 24-point jump in policy advocacy.
- Another 54% are extremely or very willing to volunteer their time or make financial contributions – compared to 33% among all others. This represents a 21-point increase.
In total, strong perception of community partnership nearly doubles people’s willingness to act.
But aren’t all children’s hospitals already strongly viewed as good community partners? No. Barely over half (54%) of the public believes that strongly. The 2025 research also revealed a knowledge vulnerability: many members of the public lack understanding of the broader role children’s hospitals play in improving pediatric health and well-being. For example, only 3 in 10 said children’s hospitals provide enough community benefit, while one in five were unsure.
Where do we go from here?
A recent Chartis whitepaper on ‘The Future of Children’s Hospitals‘ underscored what many children’s hospital leaders understand: “The next era of care will require deeper and more intentional collaboration to extend pediatric expertise, combine capabilities and investment, and address needs that increasingly span organizations and sectors.”
Why?
Because many of children’s most pressing needs “require a broader response than healthcare institutions alone can provide.”
Motivated, strategic and passionate children’s hospital leaders are already involved in building coalitions and partnerships to extend reach and improve kids’ health. Our latest research shows that these efforts can become a powerful two-way street. Building partnerships in your community is an avenue to greater impact – your organization reaching out into the community. And, it’s the path to greater public advocacy on your behalf – the people you serve rallying around your mission.
The same partnerships that improve children’s health can also become the proof points that move donors, policymakers, families and community leaders from passive admiration to active support. Because even though pediatric healthcare has a broad and deep well of goodwill, goodwill is too passive for the moment children’s hospitals are facing. Action and forward movement are needed. If goodwill is the energy behind that movement, strong coalitions are the vehicles that will get us to a successful future.
Download the executive summary or contact us here to walk through the full results.
Contributors: Julie Ashby, Jed Lam, David Shifrin, and Isaac Squyres
Image Credit: Shannon Threadgill
