Religion, Politics, and Policy Related to Age-Adjusted Cancer, Heart Disease, Infant Mortality and COVID-19 Death Rates, U.S. States 2018-2021

The role of religion and politics in the responses to the coronavirus pandemic raises the question of their influence on the risk of other diseases. This study focuses on age-adjusted death rates of cancer, heart disease, and infant mortality per 1000 live births before the pandemic (2018-2019) and COVID-19 in 2020-2021. Seven hypothesized predictors of health effects were analyzed by examining their correlation to age-adjusted death rates among U.S. states – percent who pray once or more daily, Republican influence on state health policies as indicated by the percentage vote for Trump in 2016, median family income divided by a cost-of-living index, the Gini income inequality index, urban concentration of the population, physicians per capita, and public health expenditures per capita. Since many people practice religion independent of formal ceremonies, the percentage of people who claim to pray daily in each state was used as an indicator of potential religious influence. All of the death rates were higher in states where more people claim to pray daily and where Trump received a larger percentage of the vote. The rates were consistently lower in states where public health expenditures were higher. Only COVID-19 was correlated to physicians per capita, lower where there were more physicians. Corrected statistically for the other factors, income per cost of living explains no variance. Heart disease and COVID-19 death rates were higher in areas with more income inequality.