"Losing Control of the Public Health Brand: Cost & Consequences"
Charles Hayslett, Atlanta Hospital News and Healthcare Report
For more than a year, our firm has been managing an advocacy campaign aimed at rebuilding Georgia’s Public Health System. Called Partner Up! for Public Health, the campaign is funded by Healthcare Georgia Foundation, a philanthropic organization whose leaders had concluded that the state’s public health system was falling into a state of crisis.
The readers of this publication will understand that crisis better than most. Over the past decade, as the state’s population grew 20 percent, its public health budget fell from a high of $171.8 million in FY2003 to $148.4 in FY2010 (and these cuts began well before the economic downturn). Today, we spend about four cents per capita per day on public health – less than one-fourth of what Alabama’s spends – and we’re pretty much getting what we pay for.
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