Biden administration announces $7.4 billion in public health spending

The White House announced Thursday that it is investing $7.4 billion to hire more public health workers to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and future health crises (Source: “Biden announces $7.4 billion to hire more public health workers amid pandemic,” Washington Post, May 13).

The money will come from the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, which Congress passed in March.

The Biden administration said $4.4 billion will go toward boosting states’ overstretched public health departments, allowing them to hire disease specialists to do contact tracing, case management, and support outbreak investigations and school nurses to help schools reopen. Some of the money will also go to expanding the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — which plays a critical role in containing outbreaks.

The remaining $3 billion will be used to create a new grant program to train and modernize the country’s public health workforce. Applicants for those grants will be asked to prioritize recruiting staff from the communities they will serve, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds.

HPIO’s 2021 Health Value Dashboard, which was released last month, found that one reason Ohio ranks poorly on health value (47th out of the 50 states and D.C.) is that the state’s sparse public health workforce leads to missed opportunities for prevention. Data in the Dashboard shows that only three states spend less on public health than Ohio.