Document Type

Report

Publication Date

9-24-2025

Abstract

Objectives: This study tests whether and how the Canadian public health workforce differed from the Canadian general population in their political attitudes, worldviews and policy preferences related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: Nearly identical surveys were fielded to the Canadian public health workforce in 2021 through leading public health associations and to a census-balanced sample of the general Canadian population in February and March 2021. through a consumer quota sample for a survey of the general population.

Results: The Canadian public health workforce demonstrates systematically more left-wing pro-egalitarian, anti-hierarchical, anti-individualist worldviews. Those in health promotion positions are slightly more to the left than those in non-health promotion positions. However, the public health sample did not uniformly favour stricter COVID-19 containment and prevention policies than the general population. When modelling COVID-19 prevention policies as a function of cultural worldviews and ideology, it appeared that these had a greater effect on policy preferences in the general population than in the public health sample.

Conclusion: The public health workforce is more left-wing than the general population and professionals in health promotion positions are more left-wing than others in public health. But the public health workforce did not uniformly prefer stricter COVID-19 prevention policies. Cultural worldviews and ideology were stronger predictors of policy preferences for the general population than for the public health sample respondents.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

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