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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Betty Bekemeier, RN, MPH, MSN¹, Bobbie Berkowitz, RN, PhD, FAAN², and Catharine Riley, MPH¹. (1) Health Services, University of Washington School of Public Health, Box 358852, Seattle, WA 98195, 206-616-8410, bettybek@u.washington.edu, (2) University of Washington School of Nursing, Box 357263, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195

Very little exists in the public health literature that describes effective strategies or innovations in maximizing financial support for state public health systems and currently not systematic guidance is available to public health leaders charged with enhancing their systems and building public health capacity. The examination of outcomes from the Turning Point Initiative contributes to the research and practice findings regarding public health financing and begins to fill gap between the need for capacity-building resources and the dearth of well-described and successful innovative financing strategies. Researchers from the Turning Point National Program Office developed and pilot tested a survey instrument to gather specific financial data to reflect various amounts and types of resources leveraged by Turning Point states in association with their public health improvement plans and their infrastructure priorities implemented through funding by the RWJF. State Turning Point leaders were then formally surveyed to provide specifics regarding the amount of hard dollars and other resources leveraged, utilizing their own budget records and experiences with their state partnerships to provide figures for several categories of funding. Turning Point states participating in this research, in total, leveraged 6 times the national investment made by RWJF to these grantees. These leveraged dollars included some newly designated and some redistributed funds and were used for the primary system improvement priorities identified from their public health improvement plans. The findings from this research show the extent to which states can significantly expand statewide investments dedicated to public health system improvement and thereby enhance the capacity of public health systems.

Learning Objectives: