NASW Social Work Talks - EP75: Voter Registration with Vote-ER

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

We speak with Kristina M. Whiton-O'Brien, MSW, LICSW, Director of Partnerships at Vot-ER, a nonpartisan nonprofit that helps to provide patients the opportunity to register to vote. See the show notes for related resources.

This episode is brought to you by One Circle Foundation. We are all connected. Welcome to Social Work Talks. I am Greg Wright. What does health have to do with voting? We will find out as I talk with social worker, Christina Witten O'Brien, Director of Partnerships at Vote ER. Welcome to Social Work Talks. Christina, how are you doing today? Thank you so much, Greg. I am doing very well. A little warm here, but doing very well. It's also warm here in the Maryland area. When I think about voting, I don't think about health. So how are those two issues related to each other? Well, there's actually research that shows that the healthier you are, the more likely you are to cast a ballot.

And it actually shows that voting can make people healthier. We at Vote ER are really wanting to improve the health of our communities, improve the health of individuals in our communities, and see that health care professionals, health care providers have a role in civic engagement, civic health engagement, and talking to patients about voting. How long has Vote ER been around, and what is its purpose? We actually launched at the start of the pandemic, which there's a lot of irony there, because if you think about how the health of our communities, our country, and the world was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, that was really a catalyst moment for us. So Vote ER was started by Dr. Alistair Martin, who is an emergency room physician at Mass General Hospital in Boston. We are a nonpartisan nonprofit organization with a goal of providing patients the opportunity to register to vote because much of our health care system and our health care experiences are determined by the policies that our elected officials implement.

There's an idea called social determinants of health. I know a lot of social workers probably already know this, but could you explain that to our audience? So as social workers, we use the lens of person and environment. And so we understand how micro, meso, and macro levels interact with one another. And so the social determinants of health are really the things that impact someone in their community and in their lives and kind of those mezzo and macro levels. So when talking with Dr. Martin, who started Vodiar, he tells stories about patients who come into the emergency room who maybe are there not because of an urgent medical issue, but because they are inadequately housed or their food insecure. or they're having physical symptoms related to their diabetes because they're rationing their insulin because they can't afford the co-pays. So those are the types of things that happen as part of those social determinants of health that he was seeing in the emergency room.

And he actually talks about being inspired to address voter registration with a patient because of advice from a social worker. And he was working with a patient who was in the emergency room because she and her children didn't have anywhere to sleep in the winter. And she admitted to him. And he was working with a social worker around what to do to try and get her housing for the evening. and the social worker said, well, one way that we can establish residency for her to get her into transitional housing is by registering her to vote. Those are the kinds of things he was seeing in the emergency room and thinking, wow, there's more that we have to do than just write a prescription or treat somebody's health issue. We have to go upstream. We have to think about

prevention. And as social workers, we understand the need to do those types of things and to address the environmental factors, the societal factors that are impacting the patients and the clients that we work with. I know that folks are able to register to vote at a Department of Motor Vehicles, but are they also able to do that in healthcare settings too, Christina? Yes, yes. So So actually, it's really interesting because in 1993, the National Voter Registration Act was passed, and that really became what's known as the Motor Voter Bill, so that when you go to the DMV, you are able to either get a new license, take your driver ed test, get new plates for your car, you get information about how to register to vote. Well, that law also made it legal and encourages healthcare institutions to register patients to vote. Voter registration is a nonpartisan activity, and I think what's happened in our society, especially now, voting has become a political issue, and it shouldn't because it's a right that we all have. And so the National Voter Registration Act made it legal and for nonprofit organizations with most hospitals and health care institutions are to register patients to vote. So more individuals show up at a doctor's office or at a hospital than they do at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

And so that's why health care needs to be a gateway to civic engagement and voter registration. So I'm a social worker and I work at a hospital or I'm at a clinic. How do I approach a person about encouraging them to register to vote, Christina? Yeah, so I also want to let you all know that Vote ER has a wonderful partnership with Voting as Social Work. And Voting as Social Work is a collaboration of schools of social work and other social work professionals out of the Nancy Humphrey schools at UConn and other schools of social work across the country. And there's a real partnership between Voting as Social Work and

VoteER where the tools that Voting as Social Work provides and VoteER has can really work and complement to one another. So at VoteER, what we do is we have a healthy democracy kit that you can order off of our website that's free. And it's a lanyard that has the Vodiar logo, and it says ready to vote. And attached to that lanyard is a badge backer. So when working with a patient, and as I talk to my social work colleagues who are part of our social work strategy group, what you can do is wear the lanyard, and that in and of itself can be almost a passive way that a patient or client that you're working with can say, hey, what's that lanyard all about? What is ready to vote me? And you could say, oh, I'm glad that you asked. You know, here's a, here's a

QR code that if you have your phone, you can get out and scan that code and you can either check your voter registration or you can register to vote. We're also, through voting as social work, trying to embed the idea of voter registration and talking to patients or clients about voter registration as part of field education in schools of social work, or as, you know, in their internship when they're working with clients and completing a biopsychosocial, so that maybe the last question you ask, or as part of that history, the demographic history you're getting, you can say, oh, and by the way, are you registered to vote? And if not, we have a tool that can help you do it right now. Yeah. So is that an online tool or are there like forms that are available

for a patient if that person, in fact, wants to register? Right, right. So for VotER, we have tools that are all electronic and through QR codes. So those can be on a poster. It can be on a pamphlet. It can be on a button. It could be on that lanyard. I think that voting is social work also has ways that you could get maybe paper ballots. You know, the other thing we have to keep in mind is that every state has different voting laws. So there are certain ways that you need to bring up the conversation and be aware of in terms of talking to folks about voting. But right now, we're using at Vote ER, the electronic method. Well, what if a patient does not have access to a laptop or a smartphone or even the internet? I mean, is that a hurdle too that has to be overcome?

Yeah, you know, it's interesting that you talk about that because I was having a conversation last week with a doctor at Harvard School of Public Health, and she is very interested in working with incarcerated individuals and getting them registered to vote, and we talked about how to do that in prison and jail systems and thinking about nurses, social workers, or doctors who are working within those systems, and there, individuals will not have access to a cell phone, so that would have to be a paper registration form that we would use in those types of systems. So right now, VotER only has the electronic, and so we would probably have to work towards getting something with a paper ballot or paper voter registration. One Circle Foundation makes it easy for service providers to facilitate evidence-based, gender-responsive support groups for youth, teens, and adults.

Choose from curricula themes such as healthy relationships, intersectionality and allyship, mother-daughter bonds, pride for LGBTQ plus youth, and more. Attend a One Circle Foundation facilitator training and receive continuing education credits from NASW. Social Work Talks podcast listeners get 15% off your curricula order by visiting onecirclefoundation.org slash socialworktalks. I've been looking at your website. You offer advice to social workers and others. And one of the big things is be nonpartisan. And I was wondering, Christina, if you could explain that just a little bit further for us. And I think it goes back to how polarized we've come as a country and that everybody thinks that voting is either a Democrat or Republican issue, and it really isn't. You know, we need to understand that voting is a right and that every person has

the right to vote. In nonpartisan, we are not telling patients who to vote for. We are telling them that they just should vote. I was talking with a doctor last week in Georgia. She was saying that when she talks to her patients, she says to them, you know, what you do in the voting booth impacts what I can do with you here in the clinical treatment room. Because it's not about whether you vote one way or another or for one candidate or another. It's that you're voting, that your voice is heard. And we really want to stay away from giving advice and being intrusive or interrupting a session or an intervention or interaction with a client or a patient. We really just want them to know that there is power that they can have in voting and that they

should exercise their voice because the more voices at the ballot box, the healthier our communities can become and the more power maybe they can feel if they're feeling disempowered in their lives. Yes. Now, this is August and it's Civic Health Month. So Civic Health Month is actually a project of VotER. So we launched Civic Health Month in August of 2020. So Civic Health Month is a nationwide celebration to highlight the strong connections between health care, healthy communities, and civic participation. As we were just talking about, it's a nonpartisan Advocacy and Awareness Month dedicated to making voting and civic participation accessible to all, particularly those underserved by healthcare systems. So we have three objectives for Civic

Health Month. One is to drive voter registration by getting medical providers and hospitals to register as many patients to vote across the U.S. as possible. Second is to increase awareness around upcoming elections and highlight the direct impact of local elections on health and encourage turnout in these typically low attendance and nonpartisan opportunities to shape local policy. So last year, you know, 2020 was a big presidential year. This year, 2021 is an in-between year, but there are still local elections that are happening that are really important for people to be engaged in. The third objective is to amplify civic voice in health care and generate publicity and awareness to normalize specific discussion in health care so we bring

together a diverse group of organizations institutions to celebrate and partner with us so in 2020 we had about 100 partner agencies in 2021 we have now over 220 partner agencies we had a launch event at the beginning of the month where we had over 175 participants And we're having a closeout event at the end of August that's going to be co-sponsored by the American Public Health Association, the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, and Healthy Democracy, Healthy People. And so these are webinars talking about bringing voting to health care and civic health engagement. So last year, we had over 26,000 Healthy Democracy kits ordered by providers across the U.S. Those are those lanyards and the badge backers that I talked about. And last year, we helped over 9,500 patients use VoteER tools and the portal to either

register to vote or request a mail-in ballot. And September 28th is National Voter Registration Day, and on that day alone, we helped over 1,000 people get ready to vote. So we really did a lot last year. We've done a lot this year already, and we're looking forward to next August and getting ready for the 2022 midterm elections and having an even bigger and better Civic Health Month in August of 2022, and certainly welcome any organizations to contact us about partnering to get ready for that next election.

So when I'm at the doctor's office next time, I'm going to bring this up. It's so funny because I actually brought a Healthy Democracy kit to one of my doctors, and he was like, I love this. He's like, I'm going to use it. Sign me up. Is there any other thing that you would like to add, Christina? I would really like to add that every election matters. Voting is critical now, but it's always critical. For example, I'm going to be voting tomorrow in a local election for a selectman's race. And the town is anticipating only a 7% voter turnout. I know it's a summer, it's a Saturday in August, but we really need to make sure that coming out in the local election for Board of

Health, for Selectmen, for School Committee, that we're doing that because those individuals, those elected officials are voting right now on whether or not our kids should wear masks in school, on whether or not businesses should be requiring masks. And people are feeling concerned and worried about sending children back in school because of what's happening with the Delta variant and with COVID. And what happens is, is that campaigns look to who is a super voter, who gets out and votes all the time. I've done a lot of work on local and national campaigns, political campaigns, and we look and target those super voters because we know they're going to come to the polls. If underserved, vulnerable populations aren't getting to the

polls and having their voices heard, those communities are not going to have the attention that they need, and the elected officials aren't going to understand the needs of those communities. So let me talk data for a minute. So we have statistics from seven different urban areas across the country, and we have some information from East Harlem. And there's a section of East Harlem that in 2018 in the mayoral election had about 35% lower voter turnout rates than the rest of the city. That same section of East Harlem has decades lower life expectancy rates, as well as increased rates of diabetes. So we're seeing direct correlations. And we're living in a time right now of voter restriction bills being filed and passed across the country. And we know at

VoteER, we're just trying to get people to register to vote, but it's very important to make sure that people get to the polls and that they do vote and that their vote is counted. And that's additional work that needs to happen and that i think as social workers we have a role in that and i know that nasw and other organizations are on the front lines of that type of advocacy work but we're trying to do what we can from the front end and having healthcare organizations be the gateway and that that that that entry point to voting and getting people registered to vote and beginning that conversation between a trusted health care provider and a patient who may not have ever been asked before if they're registered to vote. And that's what we're trying to do at the front end.

And we pass it along to NASW and other organizations to continue to do that work of advocacy to make sure that every single person in every community has a voice with their elected official, so that they can make changes in their local community for better health, better health outcomes, and that we can all have better, healthier communities. You know, one of the things I love about Vodiar is that they elevate social workers, and so many, I think, you know, after my 30 years in social work, we've always felt like in health care, especially social workers are at the bottom of the food chain. And so that's not what Vodiar does. Vodiar really promotes social workers and sees social workers as key people in this process. So I love that because we need to do everything we

can to elevate our profession. Wow. It sounds like a wonderful program. So thank you. I've learned a lot. I'm sure that our listeners have as well. And thank you for being our guest on the Social Work Talks, Christina Witten-O'Brien at Vote ER. Thank you so much, Greg. You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers. We encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members, to create and maintain professional

standards, and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more at www.socialworkers.org. And don't forget to subscribe to NASW Social Work Talks wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to seeing you next episode.