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Associations among political voting preference, high-risk health status, and preventative behaviors for COVID-19

BACKGROUND: We investigate the relationships among political preferences, risk for COVID-19 complications, and complying with preventative behaviors, such as social distancing, quarantine, and vaccination, as they remain incompletely understood. Since those with underlying health conditions have the...

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Autores principales: Porteny, Thalia, Corlin, Laura, Allen, Jennifer D., Monahan, Kyle, Acevedo, Andrea, Stopka, Thomas J., Levine, Peter, Ladin, Keren
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8813186/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35114966
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-12633-y
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author Porteny, Thalia
Corlin, Laura
Allen, Jennifer D.
Monahan, Kyle
Acevedo, Andrea
Stopka, Thomas J.
Levine, Peter
Ladin, Keren
author_facet Porteny, Thalia
Corlin, Laura
Allen, Jennifer D.
Monahan, Kyle
Acevedo, Andrea
Stopka, Thomas J.
Levine, Peter
Ladin, Keren
author_sort Porteny, Thalia
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: We investigate the relationships among political preferences, risk for COVID-19 complications, and complying with preventative behaviors, such as social distancing, quarantine, and vaccination, as they remain incompletely understood. Since those with underlying health conditions have the highest mortality risk, prevention strategies targeting them and their caretakers effectively can save lives. Understanding caretakers’ adherence is also crucial as their behavior affects the probability of transmission and quality of care, but is understudied. Examining the degree to which adherence to prevention measures within these populations is affected by their health status vs. voting preference, a key predictor of preventative behavior in the U. S, is imperative to improve targeted public health messaging. Knowledge of these associations could inform targeted COVID-19 campaigns to improve adherence for those at risk for severe consequences. METHODS: We conducted a nationally-representative online survey of U.S. adults between May–June 2020 assessing: 1) attempts to socially-distance; 2) willingness/ability to self-quarantine; and 3) intention of COVID-19 vaccination. We estimated the relationships between 1) political preferences 2) underlying health status, and 3) being a caretaker to someone with high-risk conditions and each dependent variable. Sensitivity analyses examined the associations between political preference and dependent variables among participants with high-risk conditions and/or obesity. RESULTS: Among 908 participants, 75.2% engaged in social-distancing, 94.4% were willing/able to self-quarantine, and 60.1% intended to get vaccinated. Compared to participants intending to vote for Biden, participants who intended to vote for Trump were significantly less likely to have tried to socially-distance, self-quarantine, or intend to be vaccinated. We observed the same trends in analyses restricted to participants with underlying health conditions and their caretakers Underlying health status was independently associated with social distancing among individuals with obesity and another high-risk condition, but not other outcomes. CONCLUSION: Engagement in preventative behavior is associated with political voting preference and not individual risk of severe COVID-19 or being a caretaker of a high-risk individual. Community based strategies and public health messaging should be tailored to individuals based on political preferences especially for those with obesity and other high-risk conditions. Efforts must be accompanied by broader public policy.
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spelling pubmed-88131862022-02-04 Associations among political voting preference, high-risk health status, and preventative behaviors for COVID-19 Porteny, Thalia Corlin, Laura Allen, Jennifer D. Monahan, Kyle Acevedo, Andrea Stopka, Thomas J. Levine, Peter Ladin, Keren BMC Public Health Research BACKGROUND: We investigate the relationships among political preferences, risk for COVID-19 complications, and complying with preventative behaviors, such as social distancing, quarantine, and vaccination, as they remain incompletely understood. Since those with underlying health conditions have the highest mortality risk, prevention strategies targeting them and their caretakers effectively can save lives. Understanding caretakers’ adherence is also crucial as their behavior affects the probability of transmission and quality of care, but is understudied. Examining the degree to which adherence to prevention measures within these populations is affected by their health status vs. voting preference, a key predictor of preventative behavior in the U. S, is imperative to improve targeted public health messaging. Knowledge of these associations could inform targeted COVID-19 campaigns to improve adherence for those at risk for severe consequences. METHODS: We conducted a nationally-representative online survey of U.S. adults between May–June 2020 assessing: 1) attempts to socially-distance; 2) willingness/ability to self-quarantine; and 3) intention of COVID-19 vaccination. We estimated the relationships between 1) political preferences 2) underlying health status, and 3) being a caretaker to someone with high-risk conditions and each dependent variable. Sensitivity analyses examined the associations between political preference and dependent variables among participants with high-risk conditions and/or obesity. RESULTS: Among 908 participants, 75.2% engaged in social-distancing, 94.4% were willing/able to self-quarantine, and 60.1% intended to get vaccinated. Compared to participants intending to vote for Biden, participants who intended to vote for Trump were significantly less likely to have tried to socially-distance, self-quarantine, or intend to be vaccinated. We observed the same trends in analyses restricted to participants with underlying health conditions and their caretakers Underlying health status was independently associated with social distancing among individuals with obesity and another high-risk condition, but not other outcomes. CONCLUSION: Engagement in preventative behavior is associated with political voting preference and not individual risk of severe COVID-19 or being a caretaker of a high-risk individual. Community based strategies and public health messaging should be tailored to individuals based on political preferences especially for those with obesity and other high-risk conditions. Efforts must be accompanied by broader public policy. BioMed Central 2022-02-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8813186/ /pubmed/35114966 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-12633-y Text en © The Author(s) 2022 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
Porteny, Thalia
Corlin, Laura
Allen, Jennifer D.
Monahan, Kyle
Acevedo, Andrea
Stopka, Thomas J.
Levine, Peter
Ladin, Keren
Associations among political voting preference, high-risk health status, and preventative behaviors for COVID-19
title Associations among political voting preference, high-risk health status, and preventative behaviors for COVID-19
title_full Associations among political voting preference, high-risk health status, and preventative behaviors for COVID-19
title_fullStr Associations among political voting preference, high-risk health status, and preventative behaviors for COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed Associations among political voting preference, high-risk health status, and preventative behaviors for COVID-19
title_short Associations among political voting preference, high-risk health status, and preventative behaviors for COVID-19
title_sort associations among political voting preference, high-risk health status, and preventative behaviors for covid-19
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8813186/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35114966
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-12633-y
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