NEW SURVEY SHOWS MOST YOUNG ADULTS HAVE STRONG OPINIONS ON TOP CAMPAIGN ISSUES, BUT MANY STILL NOT PLANNING TO VOTE

MENLO PARK, CA Despite holding strong opinions on many of the issues in the upcoming presidential election, less than half of eligible voters under 25 are planning to cast a ballot this November, according to the results of a survey of 18-24 year-olds released today by MTV s “Choose or Lose” and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

At least three out of four 18-24 year-olds say they support tougher gun control, giving patients the right to sue their health plans, funding comprehensive sex education in public schools, expanding health coverage for the uninsured, and expanding hate crimes protections for gays. But only half (50%) of those surveyed say they are registered to vote and less than half (46%) say they are “absolutely” certain they will vote. In contrast, approximately 80% of all adults say they are registered and 64% say they are certain to vote in the November general election. More than 800 young people ages 18-24 were interviewed for the survey, titled Youth, Voting and the 2000 Election.

The survey documents some of the reasons young people may be avoiding greater voter participation. Seven out of ten say politicians are out of touch with the concerns of people their age, and the same percentage believe the results of the election will have no more than a small impact on them personally.

Those who are not certain they will vote cited three top reasons: a lack of information on the candidates, cited by 60%; the belief that they can make more of a difference getting involved in their community than voting (58%); and the sense that “politics is just about money and lying and I don’t want to involve myself in it” (39%). Other possible reasons for lower participation among this age group include their general sense that things are already “going in the right direction” in this country (60%), and the fact that their positions on the issues don’t put them neatly into either the Democratic or Republican camps.

“It’s clear that young people have strong opinions on the issues being debated in this campaign, but many of them don’t see the election as the way to express those opinions or have an impact on public policy,” said Vicky Rideout, Vice President at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “The connection hasn’t been made between voting and what happens on the issues they care most about.”

“Throughout this election campaign, we’ve seen that young adults today feel strongly about the issues they face as part of their daily lives but do not necessarily feel the candidates are effectively addressing their concerns,” said Dave Sirulnick, Executive Vice-President for News and Production at MTV. “Through our first presidential forum of this election, we hope to raise awareness that young voters not only have a powerful voice in the political process as a voting block but that their issues matter to this election.”

MTV s Choose or Lose to air youth forum with Vice President Gore: Youth issues in the election will be discussed at a Town Hall Forum with Vice President Al Gore, which will air on MTV on Tuesday, September 26 at 8:00 pm EST/PST. The Vice President will ask and take questions from 150 college-age young adults. The Forum, co-presented by TIME Magazine, is part of MTV s ongoing Choose or Lose campaign.

The survey revealed a number of strongly held and often surprising opinions on many of the issues in the current campaign. The results make it difficult to categorize these newly eligible voters along traditional ideological lines. For example:

• They favor tougher gun control (84% support mandatory waiting periods and criminal background checks) but a majority (54%) opposes legalization of marijuana for personal use.
• Eighty percent support comprehensive sex education in schools, but they are split on abortion rights. Fifty-one percent say government shouldn’t interfere with a woman’s right to choose, while 44% say abortion should be prohibited except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. There was virtually no difference in how young men and young women responded on the abortion issue.
• When it comes to civil rights, 77% percent favor expanding hate crimes protections for gays and 61% favor providing legal rights to gays and lesbians forming civil unions, but they are closely divided on affirmative action. Fifty percent say affirmative action is still needed to counteract discrimination, as long as there are no rigid quotas, while 44% say affirmative action programs should be phased out because they unfairly discriminate against non-minorities.
• Seventy-three percent of young adults favor giving parents more options through school vouchers, but more than half (53%) oppose giving workers the option of putting a portion of their Social Security benefits in the stock market.

Young people share all voters priority for education in the upcoming elections, but unlike older voters they are more interested in civil rights. The top five issues cited by 18-24 year-olds as “very important” in determining their vote for president are education (86%), jobs and the economy (79%), crime and violence (74%), health care (68%) and civil rights (67%).

On the topic of how to best spend the surplus, the largest proportion (44%) of 18-24 year-olds want to see it used to provide funds to improve education. Only 13% favor using the surplus to protect Medicare and Social Security and 10% want it used for tax cuts.

On health care, nearly nine out of ten (88%) support efforts to expand health insurance coverage. Fifty-one percent support a limited effort that wouldn’t involve a tax increase, while 37% favor a major effort that would require a tax increase. More than three out of four (76%) favor giving patients the right to sue their health plans. On other health issues, a majority of young people consider it “very important” to provide prescription drug coverage for seniors (64%), make Medicare financially sound (58%), and provide long term health care (56%).

“Despite their youth, this generation clearly cares about issues like health care that we traditionally think of as appealing primarily to older voters,” noted Vicky Rideout of the Kaiser Foundation. “They have enough perspective to see the importance of issues like Medicare, long term care, and prescription drug coverage for seniors.”

Methodology

Youth, Voting & the 2000 Election reports on the results of a national random sample telephone survey of 813 adults ages 18-24. The questionnaire was designed and analyzed by staff at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, MTV: Music Television and Princeton Survey Research Associates (PSRA), and was conducted by PSRA August 9-27, 2000. The margin of error is plus or minus 4%.

A copy of the full questionnaire and topline data are available online at http://www.kff.org, at MTV s http://www.chooseorlose.com, or by calling the Foundation’s publication request line at 1-800-656-4533 (ask for #3058).

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, based in Menlo Park, California, is an independent national health care philanthropy and not associated with Kaiser Permanente or Kaiser Industries.

MTV s “Choose or Lose 2000” is a multi-dimensional on-and-off air campaign designed to engage and inform young people about their stake in the future of this country by encouraging them to register and vote.

A series of new national surveys of students and their parents (1501 pairs), teachers (1001), and principals (313) from the Kaiser Family Foundation on Sex Education in America, was released on Tuesday, September, 26th, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Challenging the convention that Americans are reluctant to have sexual health issues taught in school, the surveys show that most parents, along with educators and students themselves, would expand sex education courses and curriculum. Michel McQueen Martin, Correspondent, ABC News “Nightline” moderated a discussion with students, parents, and teachers about their personal experiences and wishes for the future of sex education. Dr. Ramon Cortines, former Chancellor New York City Public Schools gauged the response from the education community.

The Washington Post/Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University national survey on “” is the third in a series of surveys examining policy issues in the 2000 national elections. This survey, conducted September 7 -17, 2000, of a nationally representative sample of registered voters also included an oversample of “Values” registered voters. This survey and all surveys in this series, are designed to provide a more in-depth look at the attitudes of issue-oriented voters and compare them to registered voters in general. Results from this survey were released by The Washington Post in September 2000.

• Topline

A 2-page issue brief that discusses significant trends in prescription drug coverage, expenditures, utilization, along with how the pharmaceutical industry prices drugs. The brief also looks at what states are doing to control drug costs and to address issues of affordability and access for low-income and elderly populations, how health plans are controlling prescription drug costs, and proposed prescription legislation in California. The brief lists the panel for a California Health Policy Roundtable held in Sacramento, California on September 11, 2000.

• Issue Brief

This document is based on proceedings from a conference hosted by the HIV Quality Care Network of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, held on June 2-3, 1999. The document addresses a range of issues including reimbursement, marketing and enrollment, network development, and quality assurance and is designed to assist HIV/AIDS service providers in their transition from a fee for service to a managed care delivery environment.

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Health News Index July/August, 2000

The July/August 2000 edition of the Kaiser Family Foundation/HarvardSchool of Public Health, Health News Index includes questions about major health stories covered in the news, including questions about the Supreme Court’s recent decisions and House action on proposals for providing drug coverage to seniors. The Health News Index is designed to help the news media and people in the health field gain a better understanding of which health stories in the news Americans are following and what they understand about those health issues. Every two months, Kaiser/Harvard issues a new index report.

• HNI July-August 2000
• Topline/Survey

The Kaiser Family Foundation and Self magazine have partnered on a nationally representative survey of more than 1000 Americans, ages 18 and older, to examine how women (and men) rate the importance of health policy issues from abortion to HIV/AIDS to Medicare in the upcoming election. Highlights from the survey include Americans views about politicians health care promises as well as which candidate Americans trust with the health care issues that are most important to them.

, July 9-14, 2000

In Durban, South Africa, more than 10,000 delegates gathered to discuss critical HIV/AIDS issues such as progress in medical research, access to treatment and care, HIV prevention, and governmental and private sector support for the fight against AIDS. Webcasts of specific conference discussions, on-site news, daily session reports, and related articles can be viewed on the XIII International AIDS Conference website.

Additional Information:

• Kaiser National Survey on American Views on the AIDS crisis in Africa
• “The Impending Catastrophe”: A Resource Book on the Emerging HIV/AIDS Epidemic in South Africa
• Interview with Michael Sinclair PhD, Senior Vice President of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s South Africa Program: highlights from the AIDS 2000 conference

:The Foundation’s Largest Initiative Ever Aims To Curb HIV Infection Among South African Youth

The initiative is a bold and ambitious attempt to reduce HIV infection among South African adolescents by promoting sexual health and healthy futures for young people. The main target group of the campaign is 12- to 17-year-olds, but special programs focusing on children 6 to 12 years of age are also part of the campaign. The focus and program components of the initiative were developed through a two-year process of investigation, consultation, and planning, including a review of international HIV-prevention programs, an evaluation of existing HIV-education efforts, and extensive focus-group research among young South Africans.

The result is a comprehensive sexual health strategy that harnesses popular culture to promote sexual responsibility and healthy living, while at the same time developing frontline services that are more responsive to the sexual health concerns and needs of adolescents. By combining sexual health education with popular culture, this approach is designed to grab and hold the attention of young people, but also to produce benefits beyond HIV prevention such as decreasing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and to confront deeply ingrained attitudes toward sex and sexuality and relationships between men and women, which impede more conventional efforts to combat HIV in South Africa.

Organized by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, is being implemented by a consortium of four partner organizations: Advocacy Initiatives, the Planned Parenthood Federation of South Africa, the Reproductive Health Research Unit, and the Trust for Health Systems Planning and Development (HST). The national advisory board, chaired by First Lady, Mrs. Zanele Mbeki, meets twice a year.

The program has four main components:

• Awareness and Education: is using a combination of television, radio, and outdoor media such as billboards, taxis, and water towers to encourage more responsible sexual behavior. The media components are backed by printed educational materials and a national telephone helpline, which provides sexual health information, counseling, and referrals for clinical care.

  In the first few years, the main focus of the media component of the campaign is to encourage more open discussion about sex and sexuality and the connection between sexual behavior and HIV and other sexual health problems. The emphasis is on encouraging teenagers to better inform themselves about sexual health and to seek help if they need more information or clinical care. has initiated a parallel campaign aimed at encouraging parents to talk to their children about sex. It has a telephone helpline for parents to call when needing advice on how to talk to their children about sex, as well as a printed guide for parents.

  About 75 percent of South African households have access to a television set and a recent national survey of South African youth confirms that television is the most popular form of entertainment among teenagers, with more than two-thirds of respondents saying they watch television more than five times per week. For this reason, television is used in combination with radio to drive s awareness and education component.

  s main television show S camto ( talk about it ) began airing its third 13-week series in February 2001. S camto s part documentary, part talk-show format has developed a cult following among young people in both urban and rural areas. The television show is supported by S camto:Print a monthly newspaper for young people focusing on lifestyle issues and sexual health. S camto:Print is distributed through a partnership with the Sunday Times to approximately three million readers. The television and print components of S camto are supported by radio programming produced by and broadcast on nine major regional and national radio stations six broadcasting in ethnic languages.

  In addition, the messages of talk about sex and inform yourself are promoted on billboards throughout the country (particularly in rural areas) and on taxis. Through a partnership with the World Bank and the South African government’s Department of Water Affairs, has also been given messaging space on 160 water towers in rural parts of the country.

  is currently working with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to develop a youth television game show with a sexual health orientation.

  Codi: Loud and Clear s first television program targeting younger children airs on SABC television six days a week. Codi: Loud and Clear is a series of two-minute inserts designed to encourage children and parents to talk about such difficult issues as sex, HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, and violence. The television component is also supported by a booklet designed to help parents initiate discussion about difficult issues with their children.

  Both the broadcast and print media promote the telephone helpline. Since it was first advertised, the helpline has averaged between 80,000 to 100,000 calls per month about 85 percent of South Africans now have access to a telephone and approximately 65 percent of calls to the helpline are from young people in rural parts of South Africa. In response to the high demand and callers need for more in-depth information and counseling, the number of operators has doubled and their training in sexual health issues has been substantially enhanced. A more sophisticated referral system has also been set up, enabling operators to refer calls to trained sexual health and HIV counselors. These counselors, where possible, are able to refer callers for clinical care.

  has developed a website (www.lovelife.org.za) as an interactive source for sexual health information. Even though Internet access is still relatively limited in South Africa, the website averages 50,000 hits per month. The website is also strategically important in developing s connection to schools because the government with the backing of a consortium of computer technology companies has launched a major drive to connect schools to the Internet. The Y-Centres also include Internet cafes that not only provide Internet access for local teenagers, but also training to encourage increased computer literacy among young people in remote parts of the country.

• Service Development: A major obstacle to HIV prevention is the alienation of young people from public health services. Most teenagers express fear and reluctance about using public health services for a sexual health problem.

  In partnership with the South African Department of Health, has developed national standards for adolescent-friendly services in primary care clinics. These standards provide the basis for an adolescent-friendly clinic accreditation program. This program includes intensive technical assistance and training to help clinics meet the accreditation criteria, as well as monitoring clinics compliance with the standards. The goal is to get all 5,000 clinics, countrywide, to comply with the adolescent-friendly standards within three to five years.

• Outreach: is working to strengthen and replicate existing successful sexual health education programs. Peer groups are one of the most effective mechanisms for sexual health education. is building on the strength of existing peer-education programs by using peer educators who will train a national youth corps of young people to work as community mobilizers and sexual health educators in more remote parts of the country.

  The work of these young people is supported by the loveTrain a sexual health education center and clinic on rails and the loveTours a mobile radio broadcast unit. The approach is to motivate young people to participate in sexual health education programs through recreational opportunities and entertainment.

  Since September 1999, has opened five Y-Centres at Orange Farm in Gauteng; at Motherwell in the Eastern Province; at Kutwalanong in the Free States; and at Mandeni in KwaZulu-Natal. Y-Centres are multipurpose recreational venues for young people, designed to demonstrate that sexual health services for young people can be more effectively provided in non-clinical settings. What is learned in the Y-Centres also informs s work in making government clinics more accessible to young people. s Y-Centres are the key components of what will eventually be a national network of government-funded youth-friendly centers incorporating sexual health services.

  The basic ingredients of all Y-Centres are: sexual health education, counseling, and care; partnership with a radio station; and a basketball court. Additional elements of each Y-Centre are developed in partnership with the local community. The primary purpose of the Y-Centre is to demonstrate the effectiveness of a non-clinical environment in providing sexual health education and care for adolescents. Y-Centres also provide venues for peer education programs and a regional base for the corps of community mobilizers.

  In addition, in a special effort to reach the four million students in secondary and high schools in South Africa, has entered into a partnership with the United Schools Sports Association of South Africa to create a yearlong calendar of school sports competitions called the Games culminating annually in a weeklong mini-Olympics national sports competition.

• Monitoring and Evaluation: Ongoing monitoring and evaluation is essential to help ensure that the campaign reaches its target audience, help inform the development of public policy and government programs and services, and to track the impact of on young people s sexual behavior and the incidence of teenage pregnancy, HIV, and other STDs. Baseline surveys in each of the five Y-Centres have been completed. In addition, evaluation sites have been identified in each of the nine provinces to track the increase in clinic attendance by adolescents, condom usage among the target age group, reported STIs and teen pregnancies, and cases of HIV. Besides monitoring these key measures in the five core sites, is also helping to inform bigger government surveys such as the annual national survey of women attending antenatal clinics, which is the primary source of HIV data, and the biannual national household and demographic survey, which tracks a variety of behavioral measures including condom usage.

  So far, has completed four separate brand-awareness and message-impact surveys using different methodologies, including random intercept interviews, focus groups with teenagers and parents, and in-person interviews with a random sample of 1,000 respondents (half who were adults and half who were teenagers). The results of all four surveys have been very positive. More than two-thirds of respondents spontaneously recognized the brand and, of those who recognized the brand, more than 80 percent described it as a program promoting sexual responsibility. Brand-recognition is higher among rural respondents, who were also more supportive of the urgency to talk about sex as part of the effort to prevent HIV. About 75 percent of all respondents rated as innovative and effective in getting me to think. Adults and teenagers were almost even in their support of . The low level of negative responses to were mostly attributable to white adult respondents.

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This document provides a side-by-side comparison of four major federal proposals under consideration to provide outpatient prescription drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries. It begins with a summary table comparing key features of each proposal, followed by a detailed comparison of the following major proposals: Clinton/Moynihan (The Medicare Modernization Act), House-Passed Plan (The Medicare Rx 2000 Act), Breaux/Frist (The Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act), and Graham/Bryan/Robb (The Medicare Outpatient Drug Act of 2000).

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