Beyond the divide: Reporting Americans’ surprising consensus on health equity
By Rebecca Grapevine/Georgia Health Journalism Fellow
Americans are more aligned on health than headlines about vaccines and abortion debates suggest, policy experts and advocates at HJ26 said.
Panelists for “Beyond the divide: Reporting Americans’ surprising consensus on health equity” urged journalists to foreground that consensus and focus on solutions.
A 2025 survey of 1,578 American adults by the Institute for Policy Solutions at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing found a majority believe people should have access to care regardless of ability to pay.
Those findings undercut a prevailing view that improving some people’s access to care will undercut others’. In fact, there’s much more consensus among Americans across political parties, said Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, the executive director of The Institute for Policy Solutions at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing
Still, finding common ground in a fractious political landscape requires hard work, said Kody Kinsley, who was North Carolina’s secretary of health and human services when the state expanded Medicaid in 2023. His team put together an “unlikely” coalition including local business leaders and sheriffs, to make the case that Medicaid expansion would benefit Republican lawmakers’ rural constituents.
Kinsley predicted the backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion, and federal policy changes like Medicaid work requirements will disproportionately impact rural, white, and conservative voters in North Carolina.
In contrast, the stripping away of abortion and other reproductive rights has drawn attention to and prompted an emerging bipartisan consensus on the importance of maternal health, Kinsley said.
While views on abortion are highly polarized, as seen in debates on when life begins, a majority believe access to contraception is essential, said Joely Pritzker, senior director of health care at the Power to Decide, an organization that advocates for “sexual and reproductive well-being.”
She urged journalists to include this context when writing about reproductive rights and feature solutions as much as problems.
“If we focus on people dying without also focusing on the things that we know work to prevent people from dying, it can give the impression that there is inevitability,” Pritzker said.
Despite progress, the HIV epidemic is not over and is riven by inequities that journalists should cover, said Harold Phillips, CEO of the National Minority AIDS Council.
Black and Hispanic people are overrepresented among new HIV diagnoses, and new diagnoses are disproportionately high in the South, Phillips said.
Press attention can create real change: Phillips pointed out that news reports in Florida helped convince lawmakers to reverse a policy that would have resulted in about 16,000 people losing access to HIV medication.
Journalists should highlight that treatment is a crucial part of HIV prevention because people who are successfully treated cannot transmit the disease. Story ideas, Phillips said, could focus on people aging with HIV and how funding and policy changes are impacting people’s access to medications in their own states.
“You all, as the media, can help us shape the narrative and shape the public’s understanding,” he said.
Rebecca Grapevine is a health care journalist based in Atlanta.
