Seeing Public Health as an Investment in People and Communities

In this blog, we’ve discussed many of the challenges facing the public health system — declining health outcomes, burnout among public health professionals and the chronic lack of capacity in many public health agencies. Nearly 40 years ago, the Institute of Medicine’s Future of Public Health report warned that the system was in “disarray” and “chronically underfunded.” Those warnings remain just as relevant today in the wake of the expiration of pandemic-driven federal investments in state and local public health and job cuts at federal health agencies, which threaten to further weaken an already lean system.

Given these persistent challenges, how do we, as public health leaders, effectively communicate the value of public health? Of...