By Karen Stokes
The act of voting is at the heart of a healthy democracy. Research is building the case that voting also plays an important role in physical health which affects who votes.
Experts indicate that these connections are a complex mix of cultural, political, and other factors that studies are just beginning to explore. However, it’s not a fringe idea. Major organizations like the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, and the American College of Physicians have recognized that voting impacts health, highlighting the importance of voting access as a concern for healthcare professionals.
“I think there’s a clarity that’s growing” about the connections, said Dr. Anita Chandra, vice president and director of RAND Social and Economic Well-Being, based in Arlington, Virginia. Chandra co-wrote a 2019 report on how civic engagement, which includes activities such as voting and volunteering, is linked with physical and mental health and overall well-being.
“Just a decade ago, the idea of linking voting and health was controversial,” said Chandra, whose background is in public health and child development. Today, she said, voting and other forms of civic engagement are increasingly seen as an essential element of health.”
In one historical example, after women in the U.S. won the right to vote in 1920, elected officials enacted public health measures championed by women, and child deaths fell by 20,000 a year, according to a 2008 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Another article, published in The Lancet Regional Health-Americas in 2023, found that better access to voting correlated with better health as measured by an index of 12 factors such as premature mortality, infant mortality, active physicians, and poverty.
While recent national elections have had the highest turnout in decades, a 2023 Pew Research Center report found that only 66% of those eligible voted in the 2020 presidential election and only 46% turned out for the 2022 midterms. In the nation’s largest cities, participation in local elections is even lower– a median of 20% for municipal elections, according to researchers at Portland State University.
Arena is among those who say healthcare professionals at all levels have an important role to play in boosting voter access.
“It should be considered part of your professional responsibility to advocate for voting rights and access to voting,” he said.
Some politicians consider such efforts to be partisan. However, the work of Arena and his colleagues showed that the strength of the connection between poor health and low voter turnout was similar in Democratic and Republican regions. That suggests the influence of health on participation transcends political affiliation.
Chandra says that the focus should be on improving lives by helping people engage with their communities. “If we’re trying to enhance life expectancy, enhance life satisfaction, enhance optimism, and reduce the diseases of despair, then I would say engagement as a general principle is certainly nonpartisan.”