Public Perceptions and Health Communication

Session Submission Type: Created Panel

Session Description

The papers on this panel all explore public perceptions of hot button health policy topics. Neeman uses data from a nationally representative conjoint experiment to examine public perceptions of deservingness for home and community-based services (HCBS) designed to assist people with disabilities and older adults remain in the community and avoid institutionalization. Freedman and Warwick situate the highly partisan and polarized debate about COVID-19 vaccination policy within broader debates about trust in science, and confidence in government actors and regulatory institutions through a comparison with debates about genetically modified organisms (GMOs)—a much less partisan issue. The authors use an original module of the 2022 Cooperative Election Study (CES) to investigate whether the salience of the politically charged, highly polarized issue of COVID-19 vaccination has the potential to prime public opinion about GMOs. Uhlaner investigates whether wearing a mask for health and public health reasons is highly susceptible to “relational goods,” that is to the expectations of the people one cares about. Finally, Sylvester and Haeder exam organ donation processes and the need for reform. They test different messaging approaches relating to race, ethnicity, and disease type and the effects on perceptions of "deservingness." Together, these papers raise interrelated questions about effective health communication, polarization, and regulatory authority.

Sub Unit

• Division 48: Health Politics & Health Policy

Individual Presentations

• Allocating Home Care: Assessing Deservingness Perceptions for In-Kind Services - Ari Neeman, Harvard University

• Vaccines, GMOs, and Climate Change: Partisanship and Public Opinion of Science - Paul B. Freedman, University of Virginia; Emily Gregory, University of Virginia

• The Impact of Relational Goods on Using Masks during the COVID-19 Pandemic - Carole Jean Uhlaner, University of California, Irvine

• Racial Bias and Deservingness: Perceptions of Organ Transplant Recipients - Steven M. Sylvester, Utah Valley University; Simon F. Haeder, Texas A&M University

Chair

• Katherine McCabe Rutgers University

Discussants

• Katherine McCabe Rutgers University

• Jake Haselswerdt University of Missouri, Columbia