Exploring Religiosity as a Contributor to Public Understanding of Health Equity

• In Event: Poster Session: Health Policy and Politics & Information Technology and Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Emerging Research in Health Policy and Politics

Abstract

Good health continues to be unequally distributed in the United States. Health and social policy are key to changing economic, social, and environmental systems that perpetuate health disparities, but policy is effective only if it is designed, implemented, and communicated about in ways that advance equity. This paper will reveal opportunities to promote equitable policy through communication. Specifically, I will analyze survey data to illuminate the contribution of religiosity to understanding of health equity; detail the implications for health and social policy-related communication; and the imperative of doing so for successful policy reform.

Background
Centering health equity in policy is an important priority, but to do this well and in ways that are politically feasible, it is critical to explore the public’s understanding of health equity and what values and beliefs contribute to their understanding. Health equity is the notion that “..everyone has a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy possible,”(Braveman, 2017). Efforts to bolster understanding and garner policy support will be futile if they are not contextualized or framed considering these values and beliefs. Expanding how health equity is discussed, to elevate equity in connection to a myriad of beliefs and values, is a key part of achieving health equity through policy. Discussing health equity in the context of religious beliefs and values may be one such way of expanding understanding of key concepts and ultimately, bolstering support for health and social policy reform.

A large portion of U.S. adults report that religion is important in their lives, but considerations of religious beliefs and how this may affect support for public policy has not been a focus of recent health equity research. Religiosity can be broadly defined and in this context is conceptualized as identifying with a faith community and/or participating in religious activities such as prayer or worship. Recent research on COVID-19-related attitudes has demonstrated, for instance, that some religiously-identifying individuals believe it is against their religious views to participate in health-promoting behaviors and they may also hold distinct attitudes about others who participate in certain health-related behaviors (Milligan, et al, 2021). If and how these views extend beyond the individual-level and affect support for equitable health and social policy has not been explored in detail and the evidence is mixed. A goal of this paper is to address this gap by expanding upon existing evidence of how religious and spiritual concerns affect individual health-related behaviors and attitudes, and to reveal the contribution of religiosity to understanding of health equity, and subsequently, health and social policy support.

Methods
I will use the 2018 and 2020 waves of the National Survey on Health Attitudes, which are fielded among the RAND American Life Panel (ALP), and ask about health equity-related concepts and policy preferences. I will link these data to other surveys fielded among the ALP that ask about religiosity so that the final data set has both respondents’ religiosity, their health equity-related beliefs, and their policy preferences. To assess the relationships among variables, I will estimate a series of regression models and include relevant demographic controls based on existing literature and descriptive statistics of these data.

Implications
This evidence of what contributes to an understanding of health equity is key to effective communication about health and social policy, and ultimately, successful policy reform.

Author

• Margaret Tait, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities