Parent Perspectives on Health Care-Based Voter Engagement: A Qualitative Study

To determine parent perspectives on (1) the connection between voting and child health and (2) the best ways for clinicians to promote voter engagement among patients and their families.

Qualitative study with semistructured interviews. Parents or guardians of all patients of academic pediatric primary care offices at a large, urban children's hospital in the Midwestern United States were invited to participate by email. Participants completed demographic and voting habits surveys. Trained coders independently analyzed transcripts using iterative, thematic, inductive open coding.

We conducted 22 interviews. Most participants were female (91%), Black (55%), and non-Hispanic (95%). Participants represented a variety of education levels, political perspectives, and degrees of civic participation. Themes on the connection between voting and child health included the following: (1) voting helps "make your community a better place" for children now and in the future; (2) voting impacts funding for services that affect child health; and (3) voting influences our social environment, which in turn impacts child health. Themes on recommendations for health care-based voter engagement included the following: (4) consider context about voting messaging (eg, provide context about connection with health); (5) provide a variety of communication media options for delivering voting information; and (6) include a variety of health care staff in delivering voting messages.

In this qualitative study, we captured parent perspectives on the connection between voting and child health and desired methods for health care-based voter engagement. Our findings can inform future hypotheses for testing the mechanisms underlying established connections between voting and child health outcomes.