A voter casts her ballot at a polling station in Chicago during primary elections in March. Research shows that voting participation is linked to both individual and community health.
Photo by Jacek Boczarski, courtesy Anadol/Getty Images
For Andrea Perez, a neuroscience student at the University of California-Los Angeles, learning the inner workings of the human brain comes easily. But learning the nuances of door-to-door canvassing to increase voter turnout in East Los Angeles takes some work.
In October, Perez participated in a voter engagement campaign sponsored by California’s AltaMed Health Services, the nation’s largest independent federally qualified community health center. The campaign — “My Vote. My Health” — aims to ensure that both community health center patients and local residents are engaged in the election process and empowered to vote.
Going door-to-door had its challenges, Perez said, but by the end of the work, she felt like she had meaningful conversations and moved the needle on voter participation.
“I was able to experience a broad range of people, all from the same community,” Perez, a first-generation American who hopes to become a physician, told The Nation’s Health. “I talked to people who had already voted in the past, people who didn’t know anything about the voting process, people who unfortunately didn’t have the documentation status to vote but still felt that it was their responsibility to tell their family members who could.”
From local city councils to the White House, health will be on the ballot in hundreds of races in November. Armed with innovative tools and groundbreaking new strategies, public health organizations are uniting in historic ways to improve population health by strengthening civic and voter participation across the health sector.
States with more inclusive voting policies and higher civic participation rates have better health outcomes, research consistently shows. A Pew Research Center report found that despite 2020’s record voter participation, one-third of U.S. eligible voters did not cast a ballot, and more than half of eligible voters did not vote in 2022.
Given the thin political line dividing the nation this election season, “intermittent voters often determine the outcome of elections and how the balance of support for the two major political parties swings between elections,” the report said.
Makayla Davis, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, is helped by Coby Rich, left, during a registration drive on campus in Philadelphia in 2022. Registration ups voter participation.
Photo by Michelle Gustafson, courtesy The Washington Post/Getty Images
Work to bring voter registration and civic engagement activities into routine health care is growing, said Aliya Bhatia, MPP, executive director of Vot-ER, a nonpartisan organization working at the forefront of integrating the two. Vot-ER programs have expanded into more than 500 hospitals and clinics and have helped tens of thousands of Americans register and prepare to vote, she said.
“Whether it’s through providing voter registration materials in waiting rooms, alongside discharge paperwork, or health care providers asking patients if they are registered to vote and using our Vot-ER badge-backers to register them in the office in real-time, health and medical organizations are playing a pivotal role in expanding access to the democratic process,” Bhatia told The Nation’s Health.
Even Healthy People 2030, the federally led program that sets 10-year health objectives for the nation has chimed in. Last year, Healthy People’s objective to increase the proportion of voting-age citizens who vote was recategorized from a research objective to a core objective.
“Voting offers a chance for people to contribute to decisions that can affect their communities and directly or indirectly impact their health and well-being,” the objective says.
For its part, California’s AltaMed launched the “My Vote. My Health” campaign in 2018 to increase participation among Hispanic residents in so-called “civic deserts,” where people were less likely to vote. The campaign has since grown and scaled its integrated civic engagement model to other community health centers statewide.
Poll workers assist voters on Super Tuesday in Charlotte, North Carolina, in March. More than half of eligible U.S. voters did not vote in 2022, a Pew Research Center report found.
Photo by Grant Baldwin, courtesy Getty Images
To further increase access to voting, AltaMed has hosted 66 mobile voting centers and flexible polling sites where more than 1,700 people have voted. The campaign is rich with voter outreach events and resources such as buttons, posters and door hangers. In addition, full training is provided to volunteers to prepare them for success when doing door-to-door canvassing as well as texting and phone banking campaigns.
“Talking about civic health is extremely important,” Ilan Shapiro, MD, MBA, medical affairs officer at AltaMed Health Services, told The Nation’s Health. “It’s a movement, meaning that we need to start with simple questions and also make sure that the health care system is ready for this because when we talk about civic health, a lot of people get scared.
“But this isn’t for one party or another party. This doesn’t have a color. This doesn’t have a flavor. It’s representation for everybody.”
Organizers say patients often look surprised when a health care visit with their AltaMed provider wraps up with: “And oh by the way, are you registered to vote? Do you have a plan to vote?” Similar looks of surprise come when patients open their front doors to find their physician on the doorstep wearing their white coat and holding buttons, stickers and information about where and how to vote.
Such interactions are important because misinformation and disinformation are widespread in communities of color, especially in Spanish-speaking communities, said Lizette Escobedo, AltaMed vice president of government relations. But the good news is that the community sees health care professionals as “trusted messengers,” which is why health care workers can play a key role in dispelling false information.
“Latinos highly value education and health care,” Escobedo told The Nation’s Health.
Ironically, voter turnout is low even among those trusted messengers, including physicians, nurses, physician assistants and dentists. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, health care workers make up the nation’s largest workforce, but research consistently shows voter turnout in the group is low.
To move the needle and bring more health care providers to the polls, three organizations — Civic Health Alliance, Healthy Democracy Healthy People and Vot-ER — recently launched an innovative collaboration called “Thrive Through Civic Health: We Will Vote.” The initiative aims to build awareness and commitment among health care workers, who can then take up the banner and promote voter participation with their colleagues, organizations and the communities they serve.
The initiative is asking organization leaders to visit its website and sign the pledge to be an “organizational champion” by promoting voting among their members and employees. Individual pledges can also be made. The website includes a toolkit to help engage members and the workforce. So far, about 30 organizations, including APHA, have signed on as organizational champions.
“We need to collectively show up and be sure that we’re voting, and that the people that we’re serving have the opportunity to vote and participate in the electoral process,” said Jeanne Ayers, MPH, RN, executive director of the Healthy Democracy, Healthy People initiative, which is one of We Will Vote’s three founding sponsors.
One major obstacle that concerns Ayers is that some health professionals do not view politics in high regard or think politics does not affect them.
“That’s the space where public health needs to say, ‘You know, it has everything to do with us. If you’re an emergency room physician and you’re sending people back out who don’t have houses, or they don’t have transportation, or they don’t have medications, well, that’s completely connected to the policy environment.’”
For more information on We Will Vote, including information on upcoming virtual round-tables and registering as a champion, visit www.healthydemocracyhealthypeople.org/wwv.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
