A Retrospective Analysis of American Dietitian Financial Donations to Political Parties

Background: Political advocacy surrounding healthcare policy has become increasingly relevant as key platform issues focus on preventive care and the impact of nutrition on health outcomes. Contributions from individuals and political action committees are pivotal in determining the direction of political advocacy. Objective: This study aimed to examine the trends of political contributions of U.S. dietitians from the years 2003-2021. Methods: This study was a retrospective review using the 2003-2021 cycles of the U.S. Federal Election Commission (FEC) database. Contributions were filtered for occupation lines matching either “registered dietitian nutritionist,” “registered dietitian,” “rdn,” “rd,” “dietitian,” and “dietetic.” Each contribution is designated to a recipient committee associated with a political candidate, group, or political action committee. The party designations of these committees were used to catalog donations as “Republican,” “Democratic,” or “Independent.” Results: From 2003-2021, a total of 1,612 political contributions were made to ADAPAC/ANDPAC by self-identified dietitians. ADAPAC/ANDPAC then directed these donations, making a total of 1,372 contributions to Democratic (857) or Republican (514) candidates and only 1 donation to an independent candidate for a total of $1,685,977. Excluding contributions to ADAPAC/ANDPAC, from 2003-2021, a total of 115,407 individual dietetic contributions were made to Democratic (103,061), Republican (12,010), Independent (34), bipartisan/nonpartisan (1,896), Green (7), and Libertarian (8) candidates or committees. Individual contributions from individual dietitians to political parties totaled $3,148,371, with Democratic contribution dollar amount ($2,304,918) almost triple the Republican amount ($792,516). Conclusion: Dietitian political contributions in the U.S. have increased over the past two decades. Donations from dietitians are largely polarized and skewed towards the Democratic Party. Future studies are warranted to identify how this changes preventive care policies.