Episode 66: The political polarization of health outcomes in the USA
About this episode
The episode discusses how political ideology affects health outcomes in the USA, highlighting a study that shows widening health gaps among conservative Americans.
**Paper:** [The political polarization of health outcomes in the USA](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02474-9) **Authors:** Elizabeth Elder, Neil A. O'Brian **Journal:** Nature Human Behaviour, 2026 **Why it matters:** Political ideology has emerged as a measurable social determinant of health in the United States, with conservative Americans showing widening gaps in both clinical biomarkers and mortality that persist after accounting for COVID-19, geography, and demographic change. --- **Summary** To move beyond the well-known limitations of county-level ecological data and subjective self-reports, Elder and O'Brian used individual-level longitudinal data from the Add Health cohort — the same participants tracked from adolescence in 1994 through adulthood — alongside CDC death records. They focused on Waves 4 and 5 of the survey (2008–2009 and 2016–2018), during which trained interviewers collected five objective clinical biomarkers in respondents' homes: BMI, lipid panels, HbA1c (a blood glucose marker), blood pressure, and C-reactive protein (a marker of systemic inflammation). These were combined into a single comorbidity index. In Wave 4, when participants were in their…
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