Political Distrust and Confidence in Medical Institutions in the United States

• In Event: Medical Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 4. The Institution of Medicine

Abstract

Public confidence in medical institutions is a central component of effective health care delivery and public health governance. While prior research has documented demographic and partisan correlates of trust in medicine, less is known about how broader orientations toward political institutions is associated with confidence in medical institutions in the contemporary United States. Using nationally representative data from the 2024 General Social Survey (n = 1,760), this study examines the association between political distrust and confidence in medical institutions, net of sociodemographic and political characteristics. Political distrust was measured as an additive index capturing low confidence in the executive branch, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Confidence in medical institutions was assessed using an ordinal measure reflecting respondents’ evaluation of medical institutions. Survey-weighted ordinal logistic regression models were estimated to assess these associations. Results indicate that higher levels of political distrust are strongly associated with lower confidence in medical institutions. In unadjusted models, a one-unit increase in political distrust was associated with a 41 percent reduction in the odds of reporting higher confidence in medicine (OR = 0.59, 95% CI: 0.56–0.63). This association remained robust after adjusting for demographic, socioeconomic, and political covariates, with a one-unit increase in distrust corresponding to a 42 percent reduction in the odds of higher confidence (OR = 0.58, 95% CI: 0.54–0.62). Average marginal effects indicate that political distrust is associated with a substantial shift away from reporting a great deal of confidence in medical institutions and toward lower confidence categories. These findings support institutional spillover perspectives, indicating that distrust in political institutions extends into evaluations of medical institutions embedded within systems of governance and regulation.

Authors

• Dukanwojo Beulah Suleman, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

• Rowland Edet, University of Nebraska-Lincoln