Public Opinion and Health Politics: Policy Feedback and Misinformation

Session Submission Type: Created Panel

Session Description

An understanding of the politics of health policy issues is incomplete without an assessment of public opinion. The papers in this panel session offer new insights into critical contemporary health policy issues: the ongoing threats to and surprising resilience of the Affordable Care Act, vaccine hesitancy, and the rise of health misinformation. First, Miskell offers new findings on attitudes about deservingness regarding new constituencies under the ACA. Zhu examines how ACA policy feedback shapes the patient experience. Trujillo examines public attitudes about vaccine hesitancy, a global threat to public health. Finally, Motta examines the correlates and consequences of one particular type of misinformation, medical folk wisdom. Collectively, the papers offer new methodological and theoretical insights for scholars of health policy, public health, and public opinion.

Sub Unit

• Division 48: Health Politics & Health Policy

Cosponsor

• Division 37: Public Opinion

Individual Presentations

• The ACA and the Politics of Deservingness: Policy Feedback and Interactions - Sean Miskell, Syracuse University

• Patient Satisfaction as Policy Feedback: Does the ACA Improve Care? - Ling Zhu, University of Houston; Lawrence R. Jacobs, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

• How Misinformation Access Drives Global Vaccine Skepticism - Kristin Kay Lunz Trujillo, Harvard University; Matthew P. Motta, Oklahoma State University

• The Pervasiveness and Policy Consequences of Medical Folk Wisdom in the U.S. - Matthew P. Motta, Oklahoma State University; Timothy Herbert Callaghan, Texas A&M University

Chair

• Sarah E. Gollust University of Minnesota

Discussants

• Ashley Kirzinger Kaiser Family Foundation

• Timothy Herbert Callaghan Texas A&M University