State and Territorial Public Health Financing

The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) will field its State and Territorial Public Health Survey to all 57 ASTHO member agencies (state and territorial health officials and their staff from the 50 states, six territories and DC) this April. The 2010 survey is the second survey in a longitudinal series about state/territorial health agency responsibilities, structure, planning and quality improvement activities, workforce, and more that provides core data for ongoing public health systems research and a source for tracking state public health performance and best practices.

Presenters in this session will describe the challenges in collecting comparable state/territorial fiscal data with ASTHO's original 2007 survey and the process employed to develop a new fiscal module for the 2010 survey instrument in collaboration with the ASTHO peer group comprised of state/territorial chief fiscal officers. Presenters will also report key findings from the 2010 fiscal module, designed to capture two fiscal years of data (FY2008 and FY2009).

This survey will document the economic environment of state/territorial health agencies prior to the recent financial crisis and the H1N1 pandemic, serving as a baseline for future studies to examine the impact of the federal stimulus and H1N1 funding for public health. Furthermore, ASTHO's coordinated approach to survey design and data harmonization with the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) and the National Association of Local Boards of Health (NALBOH) will allow for more comparable data and a more complete view of the public health system as a whole.