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HERE4Justice invites all MPH@Simmons students, faculty, and alumni to submit your original work to the upcoming blog series highlighting the important connection between voting rights and health equity. MPH students: you can receive extra credit for your blog.
Deadline for submissions: December 5, 2022.
Strong democratic systems are key to having more healthy populations, of which voting is an essential element. When people exercise their right to vote, they participate in the decision making that shapes the conditions in which they live, grow, work, and age and that forms the systems and structures that determine whether or not they can make choices that enable them to achieve their full mental and physical health potential.
When more people vote, the inequity gap shrinks and health outcomes improve. In Brazil, replacing paper voting with electronic voting gave people who were less educated and poorer people a fairer chance at participating in the voting process because their vote was less likely to be invalidated due to errors. Subsequently, the priorities of these communities were reflected in national policy with increased spending on the public health care system. Positive public health outcomes followed, such as an overall increase in prenatal visits and decrease in low-weight births.
Similarly, in the US, health outcomes are better in states with higher voting participation.
Racism has played an outsized role in restricting the right to vote for people of color, especially for Black people in southern states. Restrictions such as voter ID requirements, limited polling locations, and short or no early voting period keep people at home (or at work!) rather than in the voting booth when the election comes. Voters who are most impacted by unjust and health-harming policies are often those whose concerns and priorities are not reflected in local, state, or national policy.
As the 2022 midterm elections approach, many fundamental rights and protections important to public health are on the line: access to abortion, marriage equality, and voting rights themselves. HERE4Justice wants to hear from you about voting, health equity, and our democracy.
We want to hear from you!
We want to hear from you!
What’s made voting easy or difficult in your community? What changes in your state voting laws and practices are needed to increase voter participation? If you don’t vote, what would make you feel like your vote counts or make the act of voting achievable? And finally, what are the implications for health equity?
Themes
Themes
We invite personal reflections, critical analyses of voting laws, and original research.
Submissions may cover any topic related to voting rights and civic participation, highlighting public health and health equity aspects.
Submission Guidelines
Submission Guidelines
Submissions may take any format! We encourage everyone to be creative, providing original art, audio recordings, videos, poems, short stories, or original research.
Written submissions should be no more than 1200 words.
Sources will be linked in-text. If possible, please include links to your sources.
Deadlines
Deadlines
HERE4Justice will be accepting and reviewing blogs for this special series on voting rights and health equity on a rolling basis through December 5, 2022.
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