BU Scientists Suggest It Might Be Helpful for Health Practioners To Ask Your Political Affiliation
Public health surveys inquire about our habits, from smoking to drinking to exercising. Should they also ask, Are you a Republican or a Democrat?
Yes—and your doctor should, too, say two health law, policy, and management scholars at the School of Public Health.
Matthew Motta, CISS Affiliate and SPH/assistant professor, and Timothy Callaghan, CISS Affiliate and SPH/associate professor, cowrote a recent commentary with two non-BU colleagues in the American Journal of Public Health. Their article notes that the partisanship-health nexus was revealed during COVID-19, when Democratic and left-leaning Americans put more importance on vaccination than Republicans and right-leaners.
Yet “zero of the 69 surveys conducted and publicly available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…include a measure of partisanship,” spanning behavioral risk factors to nutrition, the authors write.
To read more, visit BU Today, where this article originally appeared on August 14, 2024.