Invoking Identity? Partisan Polarization in Discussions of Race, Racism, and Gender in 2022 Midterm Advertising in the United States.

Context: Media messaging matters for public opinion and policy, and analyzing patterns of campaign strategy can provide important windows into policy priorities.

Methods: The authors used content analysis supplemented with keyword-based text analysis to assess the volume, proportion, and distribution of media attention to race-related issues in comparison to gender-related issues during the general election period of the 2022 midterm campaigns for federal office in the United States.

Findings: Race-related mentions in campaign advertising were overwhelmingly focused on crime and law and order, with very little attention to racism, racial injustice, and the structural barriers that lead to widespread inequities.

Polarized Perspectives on Health Equity: Results from a Nationally Representative Survey on US Public Perceptions of COVID-19 Disparities in 2023.

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.

Effects of exposure to media messages about limiting breast cancer screening: A qualitative experimental study.

Objective: Examine how women aged 35-50 respond to messages about limiting cancer screening.

Methods: A national sample of women aged 35-50 (n = 983) were randomly assigned to read one of four media vignettes: three provided information about potential harms of mammograms using evidence, norms, or an anecdote strategy, and one provided no such information. Participants listed thoughts they had about the message, and after coding these themes, we tested for associations between the themes evoked, message exposure, and mammogram history.

News Media Coverage of Childcare: How U.S. Local TV News Framed the Problem Before and During the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Early care and education (ECE), or the care young children receive before entering formal schooling, can take multiple forms and is delivered in different settings, such as a center, church, or public school. Federal and state governments regularly fund ECE programs and policies through the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act (CCDBG). Many families, however, face significant challenges in access, cost, and quality of ECE programs, and ECE professionals report substantial challenges in the workplace (e.

Strategic Messaging to Promote Policies that Advance Racial Equity: What Do We Know, and What Do We Need to Learn?

Unlabelled: Policy Points Many studies have explored the impact of message strategies to build support for policies that advance racial equity, but few studies examine the effects of richer stories of lived experience and detailed accounts of the ways racism is embedded in policy design and implementation. Longer messages framed to emphasize social and structural causes of racial inequity hold significant potential to enhance support for policies to advance racial equity. There is an urgent need to develop, test, and disseminate communication interventions that center perspectives from historically marginalized people and promote policy advocacy, community mobilization, and collective action to advance racial equity.

Television airings of U.S. federal COVID-19 public service announcements in 2020 were associated with market-level political orientation, not COVID-19 rates.

Televised public service announcements were one of the ways that the U.S. federal government distributed health information about the COVID-19 pandemic to Americans in 2020.

Serving the public? A content analysis of COVID-19 public service announcements airing from March - December of 2020 in the U.S.

The objective of this research was to examine the health messages conveyed in public service announcements (PSAs) affiliated with the U.S. federal government response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Association of Funding Cuts to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Navigator Program With Privately Sponsored Television Advertising.

Importance: Many individuals eligible for coverage in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace remain unenrolled because of information barriers. Whether the private sector or the public sector should conduct outreach to address these barriers is a topic of active debate.

Objective: To determine whether cuts to the funding of the ACA navigator program were associated with changes in the volume of private sector advertising.

Local TV News Coverage of Racial Disparities in COVID-19 During the First Wave of the Pandemic, March-June 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted health and social outcomes for people of color in the United States. This study examined how local TV news stories attributed causes and solutions for COVID-19-related racial health and social disparities, and whether coverage of such disparities changed after George Floyd's murder, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We systematically validated keywords to extract relevant news content and conducted a content analysis of 169 discrete local TV news stories aired between March and June 2020 from 80 broadcast networks within 22 purposefully selected media markets.

Americans' perceptions of health disparities over the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: Results from three nationally-representative surveys.

COVID-19 has illuminated health inequity in the United States. The burdens of disease are much higher among Black and Indigenous people and other people of color. Disparities by income are also profound, as lower-wage workers were less able to adopt mitigating behaviors compared to higher-income counterparts.

Health Insurance Ad Messages Targeted to English- and Spanish-Speaking Populations in a Period of Limited Federal Investment in Marketplace Outreach.

Federal funding cuts to enrollment outreach and marketing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace options in 2017 has raised questions about the adequacy of the information the public has received, especially among populations vulnerable to uninsurance. Using health insurance ads aired from January 1, 2018, through December 21, 2018, we conducted a content analysis focused on (a) the messaging differences by ad language (English vs. Spanish) and (b) the messaging appeals used by nonfederally sponsored health insurance ads in 2018.

Effects of politicized media coverage: Experimental evidence from the HPV vaccine and COVID-19.

Although concerns about politicization of health and science are not new, the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified attention to how political disagreement over scientific guidelines and recommendations might influence attitudes and behaviors about the health topics in question and might even spill or carry over to affect other attitudes important to public health. The literature employs differing definitions of politicization-at times referring to controversy in the public sphere, at others referring to the exploitation of the uncertainty inherent in science, and at still others referring to whether the issue enters political discourse-all of which are viewed as distinct dimensions by the public. What is not known is how these different aspects of politicization influence public attitudes about the health topics and or broader attitudes about scientific guidelines, and-assuming adverse effects-what strategies might be effective at mitigating the consequences.

Changes in Marketplace competition and television advertising by insurers.

Objectives: The Trump administration ended television advertising for the Health Insurance Marketplace prior to the 2018 open enrollment period, leaving insurers as the predominant source of health insurance advertising. Prior research findings are mixed on the effectiveness of private advertising on Marketplace enrollment, but no work to date has examined how competitive changes in health insurance markets are related to marketing patterns. This study provides the first evidence on how insurers are altering their marketing in response to changes in competition.

Evidence-Based Message Strategies to Increase Public Support for State Investment in Early Childhood Education: Results from a Longitudinal Panel Experiment.

Unlabelled: Policy Points  Investments in early childhood education can have long-lasting influence on health and well-being at later stages of the life course.  Widespread public support and strategies to counter opposition will be critical to the future political feasibility of enhancing early childhood policies and programs.  Simple advocacy messages emphasizing the need for affordable, accessible, high-quality childcare for all can increase public support for state investments in these policies.

Prevalence and Potential Consequences of Exposure to Conflicting Information about Mammography: Results from Nationally-Representative Survey of U.S. Adults.

As scientific evidence evolves and clinical guidelines change, a certain amount of conflicting health information in the news media is to be expected. However, research is needed to better understand the public's level of exposure to conflicting health information and the possible consequences of such exposure. This study quantifies levels of public exposure to one paradigmatic case: conflicting information about breast cancer screening for women in their 40s.

Exposure to televised political campaign advertisements aired in the United States 2015-2016 election cycle and psychological distress.

Context: Prior research suggests the potential for political campaign advertisements to increase psychological distress among viewers. The current study tests relationships between estimated exposure to campaign advertising and the odds of respondents reporting that a doctor told them they have anxiety, depression, insomnia, or (as a negative control) cancer.

Methods: A secondary analysis of U.

Relationship between Drug Overdose Mortality and Coverage of Drug-Related Issues in US Television Political Campaign Advertising in the 2012 and 2016 Election Cycles.

Context: Understanding the role of drug-related issues in political campaign advertising can provide insight on the salience of this issue and the priorities of candidates for elected office. This study sought to quantify the share of campaign advertising mentioning drugs in the 2012 and 2016 election cycles and to estimate the association between local drug overdose mortality and drug mentions in campaign advertising across US media markets.

Methods: The analysis used descriptive and spatial statistics to examine geographic variation in campaign advertising mentions of drugs across all 210 US media markets, and it used multivariable regression to assess area-level factors associated with that variation.

Targeting of Enrollment Assistance Resources in Health Insurance Television Advertising: A Comparison of Spanish- Vs. English-Language Ads.

Latinx adults, especially immigrants, face higher uninsurance and lower awareness of the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) provisions and resources compared to other racial/ethnic groups. Television advertising of ACA health plans has directed many consumers to application assistance and enrollment, but little is known about how ads targeted Latinx consumers. We used Kantar Media/CMAG data from the Wesleyan Media Project to assess Spanish- vs.

Public perceptions of conflicting information surrounding COVID-19: Results from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults.

Conflicting information surrounding COVID-19 abounds, from disagreement over the effectiveness of face masks in preventing viral transmission to competing claims about the promise of certain treatments. Despite the potential for conflicting information about COVID-19 to produce adverse public health effects, little is known about whether the U.S.

Americans' perceptions of disparities in COVID-19 mortality: Results from a nationally-representative survey.

As with many other infectious and chronic conditions, the COVID-19 crisis in the United States (U.S.) reveals severe inequities in health.

Ten Years of Messaging about the Affordable Care Act in Advertising and News Media: Lessons for Policy and Politics.

Messaging about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has seemingly produced a variety of outcomes: millions of Americans gained access to health insurance, yet much of the US public remains confused about major components of the law, and there remain stark and persistent political divides in support of the law. Our analysis of the volume and content of ACA-related media (including both ads and news) helps explain these phenomena, with three conclusions. First, the information environment around the ACA has been complex and competitive, with messaging originating from diverse sponsors with multiple objectives.

The Emergence of COVID-19 in the US: A Public Health and Political Communication Crisis.

The coronavirus public health crisis is also a political-communication and health-communication crisis. In this article, the authors describe the key communication-related phenomena and evidence of concerning effects manifested in the United States during the initial response to the pandemic. The authors outline the conditions of communication about coronavirus that contribute to deleterious outcomes, including partisan cueing, conflicting science, downplayed threats, emotional arousal, fragmented media, and Trump's messaging.

Guns In Political Advertising Over Four US Election Cycles, 2012-18.

Gun-related deaths are on the rise in the US, and following recent mass shootings, gun policy has emerged as an issue in the 2020 election cycle. Political advertising is an increasingly important tool for candidates seeking office to communicate their policy priorities. Over $6 billion was spent on political ads in the 2016 election cycle, and spending in the 2020 cycle is expected to be even higher.

Predictors of Women's Awareness of the Benefits and Harms of Mammography Screening and Associations with Confusion, Ambivalence, and Information Seeking.

In recent years, there has been a shift toward promoting informed decision making for mammography screening for average-risk women in their 40s. Professional organizations such as the American Cancer Society and U.S.