Yongjin Choi

• University at Albany, State University of New York

The two primary narratives that have emerged to explain low COVID-19 vaccine uptake in low- and middle-income countries are constrained accessibility and vaccine hesitancy. However, it is unclear how much each issue contributes to low uptake. This article examines these twin barriers to access. Using global survey data from 15,696 respondents acros...

Objectives. To estimate the impact of communicating to the public that men who have sex with men (MSM) are most at risk for mpox on potential stigmatization and risk perception. Methods. We conducted a survey experiment randomizing exposure to messages about mpox among a sample of the South Korean public (n = 1500) in July 2022. We randomized respo...

Racial identity and political partisanship have emerged as two important social correlates of hesitancy towards COVID-19 vaccines in the United States. To examine the relationship of these factors with respondents’ intention to vaccinate before the vaccine was available (November/December, 2020), we employed a multi-method approach: a survey experi...

Study goal This study examines the sources of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and refusal in Americans by decomposing different forms of government trust/mistrust including trust in Trump and mistrust in public health institutions. Methods Using linear panel regression models with data from 5,446 US adults (37,761 responses) from the Understanding Amer...

While few would advocate that policy decisions be based solely on interest group influence or political pandering, few would also agree that decisions be based solely on evidence from randomized trials devoid of context or attention to stakeholder concerns. Yet, this is the implicit tension that has emerged between scholars, who privilege rigorousl...

That policy should be evidence‐based has become a widely accepted dictum, especially in public health, where evidence‐based policy is strongly emphasized. Yet, most public health controversies arise because there is a conflict over values, which facts alone cannot resolve. Moreover, promoting population‐based health interventions requires the art o...

Has political polarization undermined the media’ informational role during the COVID-19 pandemic? Recent studies show that politicized reporting from conservative media discouraged compliance with COVID-19 guidelines in the U.S. However, greater attention to the 24-hour news cycle may make high-consumption viewers better factually informed regardle...

Research Objective Studies on health communication have suggested that acknowledging past injustice is an important step in reducing hesitancy towards vaccination among African-Americans. However, few studies have tested this messaging through experimental approaches. Furthermore, research on racial priming suggests that framing messages in terms o...

Context: The United States is the only high-income country that relies on employer-sponsored health coverage to insure a majority of its population, and millions of Americans lost employer-sponsored health insurance during the COVID-19-induced economic downturn. We examine public opinion toward universal health coverage policies in this context....

The US remains the only high-income country that lacks a universal health financing system and instead relies on a fragmented system with the largest segment of the population receiving health insurance through private, voluntary employer-sponsored health insurance plans. While not “universal” in the sense of being mandatory and tax-financed, throu...