COVID-19 health practices and attitudes in the United States: the role of trust in healthcare

Abstract

Aim Individual-level COVID-19 vaccination and related preventive health behaviors is politically polarized in the United States. We examined whether the current polarization in COVID-19 health behavior may be explained by differences in trust in healthcare, locus of control, or insurance status. Subject and methods Our sample includes 553 US adults recruited on Amazon MTurk. We assessed odds ratios of currently vaccinated, or willing to be vaccinated if unvaccinated using logistic regression. We assessed count of routine changes and positive attitudes toward facemasks using negative binomial regression. Results Trust in healthcare was found to be an important determinant of all COVID-19 related health behavior measured in our study. Further, the effects on COVID-related attitudes/behavior from trust in healthcare are large in magnitude. For instance, our results suggest that individuals at or above the upper quartile of trust in healthcare are around 20 percentage points more likely to be vaccinated than those at or below the lower quartile. Further, we find that the effect of trust in healthcare on adherence or endorsement of COVID-19 mitigation strategies is distinct from political affiliation, i.e., the effect on COVID-19 related health behavior is independent of the polarization across political party lines. Locus of control was not associated with adherence/attitude toward COVID-19 mitigation strategies. Insurance status was only found to be positively associated with odds of being vaccinated. Conclusion Our study highlights the importance of increasing trust in healthcare as a means to protect public health in the wake of major public health crises. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10389-022-01737-9.

A Study of Self-Estrangement Among Fast-Food Workers

“…The survey was administered over two time periods, in April and July of 2021. CloudResearch was used to launch this study, and the questionnaire was made available to fast-food workers through Mechanical Turk (MTURK), a crowdsourcing service that has been increasingly used to collect data among a diverse population on a wide range of topics (e.g., Aguinis et al, 2021;Tabler et al, 2022). MTURK participants have been found to be more attentive than participants from other study pools (Hauser & Schwarz 2016).…”

Parents’ Trust in COVID-19 Messengers and Implications for Vaccination

“…11,12 One study found trust in a federal, state, or local public health agency was associated with greater likelihood of COVID-19 preventive behavior. 13 Similarly, other studies in the US found that trusting physicians, local hospitals, healthcare systems, and the CDC were associated with vaccination status and willingness to be vaccinated; 14,15 trust in scientists, local health departments, government, and medical practitioners was associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy globally. 16 On the other hand, low trust in US national public health experts and low trust in individuals' doctors were each associated with a roughly 80% decrease in likelihood of COVID-19 vaccination.…”

Variation in Unmet Need for Healthcare by Perception of Social Media Health Mis- and Disinformation, Frequency of Social Media Use, Medical Trust, and Medical Care Discrimination: Cross-Sectional Study (Preprint)

“…Certain groups are less likely to trust credible health instutions like government health agencies or health systems, but misinformation can influence the level of trust regardless of group membership [36][37][38]. Nevertheless, the spread of false information on social media undermines this trust, leading individuals to lose confidence in the healthcare institution and not seek medical attention when necessary [39][40][41][42].…”

“…This finding is consistent with prior literature and our theoretical framework demonstrating a trend toward eroding trust in medical professionals and health institutions associated with social media health mis-and disinformation that influences harmful health behaviors and poor health outcomes. [36][37][38][39][40][41][42] Trust of the healthcare system is important for patient compliance with recommended care and seeking necessary medical care, and trust is difficult to rebuild once lost suggesting this mechanism is critical for reducing the negative impact of unmet need for medical care. [4,35] Finally, adults who perceived substantial mis-and disinformation and experienced medical care discrimination had a higher probability of reporting unmet need for medical care compared to adults who did not experience medical care discrimination and did not perceive substantial mis-and disinformation.…”