Partisan Responses to Public Health Messages: Motivated Reasoning and Sugary Drink Taxes

Sarah E. Gollust is an associate professor of health policy and management at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Gollust is a social scientist studying the intersections of communication, politics, and health policy. Her past research has examined the roles of news media and public opinion within significant health policy issues, including obesity, health disparities, the Affordable Care Act, and cancer screening. The American Cancer Society, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health have funded her work. She is the associate director of the Interdisciplinary Research Leaders, a new Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program to support leaders engaged in research to advance health equity.

sgollust@umn.edu.

Colleen L. Barry is the Fred and Julie Soper Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research focuses on how health and social policies affect a range of outcomes for individuals with mental illness and substance use disorders, including access to medical care and social services, care quality, health care spending, financial protection, and mortality. She also conducts empirical research to understand how communication strategies influence public attitudes toward health care policy and politics, opioid addiction, mental illness, gun policy, and obesity and food policy. Dr. Barry codirects the Johns Hopkins Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy Research.

Jeff Niederdeppe is an associate professor of communication at Cornell University. His research examines the mechanisms and effects of mass media campaigns, strategic health messages, and news coverage in shaping health behavior, health disparities, and social policy. He has published over one hundred articles in communication, public health, health policy, and medical journals, and his work has been funded in recent years by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Environmental Protection Agency, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is an associate editor of Communication Methods and Measures and serves on the editorial boards of eight other journals.