Physicians Are No More Likely to Be Politically Active Than Non-Physicians

Physicians as a group are no more politically active than non-physicians, and they attend fewer public meetings, researchers found.

After adjusting for sociodemographic factors, physicians were more likely than non-physicians to discuss politics with friends or family (relative risk [RR] 1.09, 95% CI 1.04-1.13), buy or boycott products based on political values (RR 1.20, 95% CI 1.05-1.37), and donate to political organizations (RR 1.35, 95% CI 1.15-1.58), reported Maelys Amat, MD, MBA, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and colleagues in a research letter published in JAMA.

However, other significant differences in unadjusted analyses became nonsignificant, including for reading, watching, or listening to political news; discussing politics with neighbors; voting in local elections; and contacting elected officials.

For attending public meetings, the statistical significance changed to the point that physicians were less likely to participate than non-physicians (RR 0.74, 95% CI 0.59-0.92).

“Physicians could play a greater role in influencing health-related public policy given their expertise and socioeconomic opportunities,” the authors wrote. “Why physicians are not more involved politically should be further investigated.”

Physicians have previously been found to vote less often than non-physicians, Amat and co-authors noted in their introduction. But because voting is only one aspect of political participation, they decided to analyze other aspects of doctors’ political participation.

To do so, they looked at data from the Volunteering and Civic Life Supplement (VCLS) of the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS), a nationally representative survey of the civilian noninstitutionalized population ages 16 years or older. The survey is administered by telephone and in person to roughly 50,000 households each month, and the VCLS was provided to every CPS respondent.

The authors looked at survey items regarding respondents’ political participation using surveys administered in September 2017, 2019, and 2021, and restricted the age range to 25 to 79 to “approximate physicians’ professionally active years.” Those respondents who didn’t answer any questions related to political participation were excluded. During the survey years analyzed, response rates for the CPS ranged from 75% to 86.9%, while response rates for the VCLS ranged from 98.3% to 98.6%, they said.

Amat and team compared rates of political participation between self-identified physicians and non-physicians using multivariable log-binomial regression to compute relative risks. They adjusted for year, age, sex, race, ethnicity, educational level, family income, region, and residence in a metropolitan statistical area — factors known from prior studies to be independently associated with political participation.

The final analysis included 683 physicians and 136,239 non-physicians. Physicians differed from non-physicians on most characteristics, including age, sex, race, ethnicity, educational level, and family income.

These results “may be considered in light of past findings about lower voter turnout and community volunteerism among physicians after adjusting for sociodemographic factors,” the authors noted. “Nevertheless, physicians might be expected to be more politically engaged, as several policy issues directly influence patient health and medical practice.”

Study limitations included a limited sample size of physicians, potential bias from casewise deletion, and potentially inaccurate self-reporting. In addition, physicians are often members of professional societies that engage in advocacy and lobbying, but these are likely not reported by physicians as their own activity, Amat and colleagues wrote.

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