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Changes in Australian community perceptions of non-communicable disease prevention: a greater role for government?
BACKGROUND: Monitoring trends in community opinion can identify critical opportunities to implement upstream health policies or interventions. Our study examines change and demographic modifiers of change in community perceptions of government intervention for prevention of lifestyle-related chronic...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8591602/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34781923 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-12159-9 |
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author | Grunseit, Anne C. Howse, Eloise Bohn-Goldbaum, Erika Mitchell, Jo Bauman, Adrian E. |
author_facet | Grunseit, Anne C. Howse, Eloise Bohn-Goldbaum, Erika Mitchell, Jo Bauman, Adrian E. |
author_sort | Grunseit, Anne C. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Monitoring trends in community opinion can identify critical opportunities to implement upstream health policies or interventions. Our study examines change and demographic modifiers of change in community perceptions of government intervention for prevention of lifestyle-related chronic disease across two time points in Australia. METHODS: Data were drawn from the 2016 (n = 2052) and 2018 (n = 2601) waves of a nationally representative cross-sectional telephone survey, ‘AUSPOPS’. Survey questions gauged perceptions of government intervention for health in general, peoples’/organizations’ role in maintaining health (e.g., parents, government) and support for specific health interventions (e.g., taxing soft drink). Bivariate and multivariate regression models tested for change between the two surveys, adjusted for demographic characteristics. Models with interactions between survey wave and demographic variables tested for differential change. One-tailed variance ratio tests examined whether opinions had become more polarized in 2018 compared with 2016. RESULTS: The large, significant increase observed in the perceived size of the role that government has in maintaining people’s health was uniform across demographic subpopulations. The role for employers and private health insurers was also perceived to be larger in 2018 compared with 2016, but the degree of change varied by gender, age and/or socioeconomic status. Support for some government interventions (e.g., taxing soft drinks) increased among specific demographic subgroups whilst exhibiting no overall change. Opinion was more polarized on general attitudes to government intervention for population health in 2018 compared to 2016, despite little change in central tendency. CONCLUSIONS: Opportunities may exist to implement government health-promoting policies (e.g., taxing soft drinks), although advocacy may be needed to address the concerns of less supportive subpopulations. Attitudes on government intervention in general may be becoming more polarized; future research examining the association of such changes with exposure to different information sources could inform communication strategies for future health policy change. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-12159-9. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8591602 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-85916022021-11-15 Changes in Australian community perceptions of non-communicable disease prevention: a greater role for government? Grunseit, Anne C. Howse, Eloise Bohn-Goldbaum, Erika Mitchell, Jo Bauman, Adrian E. BMC Public Health Research BACKGROUND: Monitoring trends in community opinion can identify critical opportunities to implement upstream health policies or interventions. Our study examines change and demographic modifiers of change in community perceptions of government intervention for prevention of lifestyle-related chronic disease across two time points in Australia. METHODS: Data were drawn from the 2016 (n = 2052) and 2018 (n = 2601) waves of a nationally representative cross-sectional telephone survey, ‘AUSPOPS’. Survey questions gauged perceptions of government intervention for health in general, peoples’/organizations’ role in maintaining health (e.g., parents, government) and support for specific health interventions (e.g., taxing soft drink). Bivariate and multivariate regression models tested for change between the two surveys, adjusted for demographic characteristics. Models with interactions between survey wave and demographic variables tested for differential change. One-tailed variance ratio tests examined whether opinions had become more polarized in 2018 compared with 2016. RESULTS: The large, significant increase observed in the perceived size of the role that government has in maintaining people’s health was uniform across demographic subpopulations. The role for employers and private health insurers was also perceived to be larger in 2018 compared with 2016, but the degree of change varied by gender, age and/or socioeconomic status. Support for some government interventions (e.g., taxing soft drinks) increased among specific demographic subgroups whilst exhibiting no overall change. Opinion was more polarized on general attitudes to government intervention for population health in 2018 compared to 2016, despite little change in central tendency. CONCLUSIONS: Opportunities may exist to implement government health-promoting policies (e.g., taxing soft drinks), although advocacy may be needed to address the concerns of less supportive subpopulations. Attitudes on government intervention in general may be becoming more polarized; future research examining the association of such changes with exposure to different information sources could inform communication strategies for future health policy change. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-021-12159-9. BioMed Central 2021-11-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8591602/ /pubmed/34781923 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-12159-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Grunseit, Anne C. Howse, Eloise Bohn-Goldbaum, Erika Mitchell, Jo Bauman, Adrian E. Changes in Australian community perceptions of non-communicable disease prevention: a greater role for government? |
title | Changes in Australian community perceptions of non-communicable disease prevention: a greater role for government? |
title_full | Changes in Australian community perceptions of non-communicable disease prevention: a greater role for government? |
title_fullStr | Changes in Australian community perceptions of non-communicable disease prevention: a greater role for government? |
title_full_unstemmed | Changes in Australian community perceptions of non-communicable disease prevention: a greater role for government? |
title_short | Changes in Australian community perceptions of non-communicable disease prevention: a greater role for government? |
title_sort | changes in australian community perceptions of non-communicable disease prevention: a greater role for government? |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8591602/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34781923 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-12159-9 |
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