TFAH President and CEO Testifies Before the House Energy & Commerce Committee on the Importance of Investing in the Nation’s Public Health
May 22, 2019
“Investing in the nation’s health means we are investing in the future.” – John Auerbach, TFAH President and CEO.
John Auerbach, President, and CEO of Trust for America’s Health, testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday on the need for greater investments in the nation’s public health infrastructure through provisions in the Leading Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s America (LIFT America Act). Mr. Auerbach’s testimony focused on the need for increased funding of critical public health programs through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), state, local, Tribal and territorial health departments, and community partners. Funding in these areas is vital to ensuring that the tools needed to prevent and respond to major public health threats are available throughout the nation.
Increased public health funding is needed to meet the mounting challenges the nation faces, according to Auerbach. “Public health is starving for a real, transformative investment to bring it into the 21st century and face the nation’s growing challenges.”
Auerbach highlighted the importance of a public health infrastructure and shared two points that are critical to the committee achieving its legislative goals:
- Congress must raise the budget caps. CDC and public health face dire cuts if there is not a budget agreement this year that raises budget caps for defense and nondefense discretionary programs in parity with each other.
- Congress must appropriate funding for the programs authorized in the legislation. All too often, we see a pattern of funding cuts, followed by a disaster or outbreak, which then leads to an influx of one-time money, followed by an erosion of funds. Public health cannot function with short-term, expiring dollars, only made available during a crisis. Sustained public health funding is essential to ensuring that the country has the public health workforce, systems and infrastructure necessary to protect the nation’s health.
Learn more about the state of public health funding and TFAH’s recommendations for addressing it in our recently released The Impact of Chronic Underfunding on America’s Public Health System report.
