Results from a Nationally Representative Survey on US Public Perceptions of COVID-19 Disparities in 2023
Report Publish Date: June 2024
This journal article investigates whether members of the U.S. public knew about disparities in COVID-19 mortality based on race, age, economic status, and disability—and whether those who did know believed the disparities were caused by structural racism.
Knowing that Americans had polarized responses to COVID-19 and that the idea of health equity has also been polarized, the researchers wanted to gauge public perceptions of disparities during the pandemic. They also wanted to explore what their survey findings meant for communicating about public health, advocating and organizing for health equity, and implementing health-promoting policies. And they wanted to see what additional research is needed to better understand and reduce polarization around public health and infectious disease.
The researchers added eight questions to the NORC AmeriSpeak Omnibus survey in spring 2023. The module was designed to build on three earlier surveys on public perception of COVID-19.
“While public health has always been political, interventions are needed to disrupt the persistent linkage of Democratic political affiliation with support for public health.”
—Sarah E. Gollust, Chloe Gansen, and Rebekah H. Nagler, University of Minnesota; Erika Franklin Fowler and Steven T. Moore, Wesleyan University
The research adds to our understanding about political polarization around public health and suggests that more evidence is needed about how to explain the importance of boosting health equity and how to improve trust in and support for public health efforts.
Republicans and Democrats responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in starkly different ways, from their attitudes in 2020 about whether the virus posed a threat to whether the pandemic ended in 2023. The consequences of COVID-19 for health equity have been a central concern in public health, and the concept of health equity has also been beset by partisan polarization. In this article, the authors present and discuss nationally representative survey data from 2023 on US public perceptions of disparities in COVID-19 mortality (building on a previous multiwave survey effort) as well as causal attributions for racial disparities, the contribution of structural racism, and broader attitudes about public health authority. The authors find anticipated gulfs in perspectives between Democrats on the one hand and independents and Republicans on the other. The results offer a somewhat pessimistic view of the likelihood of finding common ground in how the general public understands health inequities or the role of structural racism in perpetuating them. However, the authors show that those who acknowledge racial disparities in COVID-19 are more likely to support state public health authority to act in response to other infectious disease threats. The authors explore the implications of these public opinion data for advocacy, communication, and future needed research.
Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, Vol. 49, No. 3, June 2024. DOI 10.1215/03616878-11066304
This study and report were conducted and created by the following people.
