Abstract
American Public Health Association Annual Meeting
Boston, MA November, 2000
Universal Health Care & Public Health Infrastructure: Two Peas in a New Pod
Frank Goldsmith, DrPH
The Year 2000 Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association will consider a number of core public health issues. A significant proportion of policy proposals will recommend solutions to individual diseases and illnesses. Short term solutions to these crises will be proposed. These short term crises often result from inattention to long term, systemic problems and surveillance breakdowns. That is why the APHA's Executive Board's Task Forces on the Public Health Infrastructure [PHI] and Universal Health Care are critical to the future of public health, in general, and our Association, in particular.
The APHA PHI Task Force has deliberated on the need for broad based funding strategies for public health programs as opposed to the previous primacy of categorical, disease specific funding. This would reverse a federal funding system that started in the early part of the 1980s.
Universal federal health legislation must, by definition, provide full health care access to everyone living in the United States.
The inter-incorporation of the Public Health Infrastructure with the universal health initiative is crucial to the success of both. Our nationwide community of public health officials seeking to re-invigorate the public health infrastructure combined with advocates for universal health care yields a powerful public health national community that can develop, enact and enforce an effective strategy for health care access from the local community to the national level and the reverse.
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Learning Objectives: To inform the public health community and policy makers about the links between public health infrastructure and universal health care
Keywords: Public Health Infrastructure, Universal Coverage
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.