Research

New Politics and Health Lab Aims to Depolarize Public Health

Led by Matt Motta and Tim Callaghan, the lab aims to thwart the rapidly increasing politicization of public health by developing evidence-based data and tailored communication strategies to bolster support for health-protective policies. 

Despite overwhelming evidence that vaccines are safe, effective, and life-saving, state legislatures across the US introduced more anti-vaccine bills than pro-vaccine bills in 2023. Moreover, this legislation was largely divided by party lines, with Republican lawmakers introducing the majority of anti-vaccine bills, while Democrats proposed the majority of pro-vaccine legislation.

This insight stems from a new research initiative at the School of Public Health that aims to achieve what seems like the impossible in our hyper-partisan American landscape: to monitor and depolarize the growing politicization of public health. 

Matt Motta, assistant professor of health law, policy & management, and Timothy Callaghan, associate professor of health law, policy & management, are codirectors of The Politics and Health Lab at SPH, which formally launched in January after a year of planning. But the lab’s core objectives—uncovering the political forces that shape health attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, are subjects that weighed on both professors’ minds since they attended graduate school together a decade ago at the University of Minnesota, earning doctoral degrees in political science. The hyper-partisan culture was very much alive during that period of time, but pales in comparison to the political divide that permeates daily lives today.

“Over the past several years, we’ve observed a growing politicization of public health topics, with individuals increasingly making health decisions based on partisanship,” says Callaghan, whose research interests include individuals’ attitudes and experiences with vaccination, GLP-1 drugs, substance use, and Medicaid, with an additional research emphasis on rural health access and experiences. “Matt and I are really interested in understanding these political influences on health to identify effective communication approaches that reduce these harmful impacts. This lab is an opportunity for us to create a nexus for research in this space, both in the School of Public Health and across BU, and we hope to make the university a global leader in the study of politics and healthcare.”

The codirectors have convened a team of faculty and student affiliates across the school and university who study a range of subjects, from economics, to sociology, to law, with a shared interest in bridging political divides to promote health. The lab’s website will serve as a repository for current research and work in progress, where other researchers and the general public can turn to find reliable, trustworthy, current, and evidence-based public health information and guidance. The lab will hold its first event (location TBD), a hybrid conversation called “Legislative Watch,” cohosted with the Center for Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights at 1 pm on February 19. Attendees will be able to ask questions about any current political events or legal issues.

Although the launch of The Politics and Health Lab was not planned to coincide with the start of the second Trump administration, it is not lost on anyone that this initiative debuted at one of the most politically fraught periods in US modern times, as the administration seeks to drastically reshape and deregulate the federal government. President Trump’s nominees for key health roles have publicly stated skepticism of vaccines, downplayed the need for infectious disease research, and/or fueled conspiracy theories about the spread of skepticism of vaccines. This includes efforts to fill leadership roles with stated vaccine skeptics such as health secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and COVID-19 lockdown opponents such as the National Institutes of Health director nominee Jay Bhattacharya, who are awaiting confirmations as the Trump administration’s flurry of constitutionally questionable moves have created widespread confusion and disruption regarding federal public health communication—and some sources of funding.

The researchers will broadly identify and study public opinion polling about support for a range of health policies; attitudes at the state and national levels, effective health communication and promotion, and ongoing surveillance of state and federal policies to identify how social, political, and economic conditions influence support and passage of health policies. The lab will address a range of health issues that intersect with politics, but they have already dedicated space for research about vaccine uptake and attitudes within the State Vaccine Policy Project (SVPP). Launched in the fall of 2023, the first-of-its-kind project tracks trends in anti-vaccine legislation in each US state, and shows how these trends have fluctuated before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is “glaringly obvious” that the pandemic accelerated anti-vaccine legislation and that these actions are deeply partisan, says Motta, who published a book last summer titled Anti-Scientific Americans , which explores how anti-intellectual harms public opinion of science and health policymaking. Data show that almost 1 in 10 anti-vaccine bills introduced into state legislatures were signed into law between 2019-2023, driven primarily by Republican state lawmakers, who aimed to reduce or eliminate vaccine mandates. And nearly half of anti-vaccine bills mention COVID-19.

“There is one party in the US that is primarily responsible for introducing legislation that takes aim at vaccine mandates and tries to roll back vaccine research across the country, and that’s the Republican party,” says Motta. While most anti-vaccine bills do not pass, those that are enacted usually take aim at vaccine requirements in schools and in the workforce. Some bills are especially perplexing—and dangerous—he says, such as a 2023 Tennessee bill that aimed to forbid the state veterinarian from requiring livestock vaccination in the event of an H5N1 pandemic. “I don’t really know what the motivation is there, besides this deep skepticism of vaccine safety and importance,” Motta says.

The researchers are also urging public health researchers to incorporate questions about partisan identity in demographic data collection. Currently, none of the publicly available surveys conducted by federal agencies or other nationwide assessments measure partisanship, Callaghan and Motta point out in a commentary in the American Journal of Public Health. Including this information could lead to more effective policy interventions, and help health experts improve communication about health issues to the public. 

“One thing we’re working to identify in the lab are effective health communication messages for different subsets of people,” Callaghan says. “We do know that it’s not just the message that matters, but the messenger. We’ve certainly seen politicization on the political right, but we’ve also started to see examples of Democrats who are less trusting of information that they hear from Republican leaders, which has implications for individuals’ health and healthcare decisions. So we’re thinking about ways we can engage with trusted messengers on either side of the aisle as a strategy to promote public health good.”

They hope that evidence-based data and clear communication will persuade people to break away from what they call the “runaway health politicization”—the idea that people are increasingly likely to accept and adopt health behaviors related to policies that already align with their political beliefs. In turn, elected officials are incentivized to cater to these preferences or beliefs—whether they are health-protective or not—to curry favor with their constituents, which can lead to poor policies that benefit no one. 

“I fear that we’re trapped in a cycle that we can’t break out of,” Motta says. “So one of the reasons why this lab exists is to try to find evidence-based measures that can finally dismantle that runaway politicization.”

Click here to learn more about The Politics and Health Lab or become involved.