“Something happened at that moment,” said Martin, who is now an emergency room physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. From that poignant confrontation, Martin came up with the idea of Vot-ER.
The organization helps patients register to vote – or receive information about voting – during their visit to a hospital or clinic.
Officially launched in the emergency room at MGH in 2019, the nonpartisan initiative has expanded to more than 700 locations nationwide, including 32 in Massachusetts, and has expanded to community health centers, physician offices, medical schools, and emergency departments.
The nonprofit organization was founded on the belief that encouraging patients to engage in the political process helps them improve many factors that affect their health, including air quality, housing opportunities, and access to healthy food.
The process begins with a simple conversation: a health care worker asks the patient if they have registered to vote.
“No one’s ever asked me about that before,” said the young mother of Martin on that cold February night.
Finally, Vot-ER has helped 66,000 eligible voters register or sign up for mail-in ballots, including 4,500 in Massachusetts since 2019.
Participating sites and healthcare workers receive a bright blue lanyard and badge to hang with their model ID card. Beneath one side of the Vot-ER badge, in bold red and white letters, appears the question, “Are you ready to vote?”
The badge also includes a QR code that patients can scan with their mobile phone and numbers they can text to receive a link to the Vot-ER website, which appears in English and Spanish. The site guides people through the process of registering to vote, allowing them to check their registration status, request a mail-in ballot, or access more voting information in their state. It also includes a helpline.
“I started making contact between people who come to the emergency room for care that isn’t emergency care, like coming in for … a prescription or a place to sleep tonight,” Martin said.
It found that “demographically, people who come to the emergency room for these non-emergent presentations overlap almost uniformly with people who are not registered to vote in this country.”
The most recent 2020 Census data shows that more than one in four Americans age 18 or older is not registered to vote. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s analysis of census data reflects the huge disparities Martin has seen in speaking to patients: In Massachusetts, only 42 percent of voting-age black residents are registered to vote, among the lowest in the country. Likewise, only 57 percent of Asians and 60 percent of voting-age residents of Hispanic origin are registered, both below national averages, according to the data. By comparison, 77 percent of white voting-age residents are registered in Massachusetts, higher than the national average.
Increasingly, research is finding that an individual’s living conditions, known as the social determinants of health, can be just as important as the health care they receive, says Heather Pierce, senior director of science policy at the Association of American Medical Colleges. AAMC partners with Vot-ER to promote civic engagement.
A recent survey by the organization found that blacks, who have often been marginalized in health care, are more likely to trust a hospital if it participates in voter registration services.
Cinella Yasmin, a second-year medical student at Tufts University, said the importance of such civic engagement is not routinely taught in medical school. Jasmine led the voter registration campaign with Vot-ER this fall and helped the school He finished eighth at the highest level In the country among medical schools for new registrations and mail-in ballot applications, according to Vot-ER.
“These are the students who will ask their patients in the future about enrollment,” Yasmine said. “We need to make these conversations more natural in medical school.”
In August, the Lawrence Center for Greater Family Health joined the Vot-ER initiative, distributing posters and “Ready to Vote” badges with QR codes to staff at its 10 clinics and locations across Lawrence, Methuen and Haverhill.
“Before that, we just got voter registration forms out of the Secretary of State’s office,” said Mary Lyman, the center’s director of community relations. “The badge is quick and easy and it won’t kill a tree.”
Healthcare workers say they understand that not everyone who helps register will follow and vote. Martin, the founder of Vot-ER, has not kept in touch with the young mother from 2018 who inspired the voting initiative.
But he remembers another young woman in her twenties he treated for an asthma attack last year. After her condition stabilized and he was getting ready to send her home with a prescription, I asked about his Vot-ER badge. He explained how recording and voting helps make her voice heard on important issues
“The patient looks at me and says, ‘No, I’m fine,'” Martin said.
Martin is usually too busy in the emergency room to have extended conversations about voting with patients. But this day was different. He sat back and explained to her that the asthma rates in East Boston where she lived near Logan Airport were among the highest in the city because the air pollution rates were also among the highest.
“I can help you with this asthma right now,” Martin told his patient. “But I can’t get smog out of the air. So it’s up to you. And the only way we’re going to help solve that is by getting involved and making your voice heard.”
The woman took out her phone, scanned the QR code on his badge, and said, “Okay, Doctor, I get it.”
Martin does not know if she has followed through and completed the registration process. But he considers that confrontation a victory.
He said, “The goal is to bring the patient one step closer to understanding this connection, and that their civic health and physical health are inextricably linked.”
Kay Lazar can be reached at kay.lazar@globe.com Follow her on Twitter Tweet embed.
Originally published at San Jose News Bulletin
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