Robert F. Kennedy's overall approval rating sits at 51 percent, though the party breakdown shows a big divide between Democrats and the GOP.

Seventeen vaccine experts who were dismissed from a federal advisory panel last week say they are worried that recent moves by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will destabilize vaccine policy in the US and jeopardize access to lifesaving immunizations.

Fiona Havers, who oversaw CDC respiratory virus data, told colleagues she no longer had confidence the data would be used objectively to set vaccine policy.

The new NBC News Decision Desk Poll powered by SurveyMonkey found adults divided over the health secretary but with a bare majority viewing him favorably.

Among the eight people Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced would make up his new group of outside vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are an emergency physician who posted Islamophobic commentary on social media and two doctors who were paid to provide expert testimony in trials against a vaccine maker.

Since becoming head of the US Department of Health and Human Services in February, RFK has initiated a major overhaul of health policy in the United States.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made several false claims about vaccines in a Thursday appearance on Fox News.