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1
Introduction and Context
Debate over America’s place at the top of economic superpowers aside,
it is clear that it is not a superpower in health. In fact, this Institute of
Medicine (IOM) Committee on Public Health Strategies to Improve Health
asserts that merely reaching the average of comparable high-income coun-
tries in health status would require considerable national effort.
Despite spending far more on medical care than any other nation, and
despite having seen a century of unparalleled improvement in population
health and longevity, the United States is now falling behind many of its
global counterparts and competitors in such health outcomes as overall life
expectancy and the incidence of preventable diseases and injuries. A funda-
mental but often overlooked driver of the imbalance between spending and
outcomes is the nation’s inadequate investment in strategies that promote
health and prevent disease and injury population-wide. Strategies that are
often summarized by the set of Essential Public Health Services1 include
monitoring and reporting on community health status; investigating and
controlling disease outbreaks; educating the public about health risks and
prevention strategies; implementing community-wide health improvement
initiatives (including the social and physical environment); developing and
enforcing laws and regulations to protect health; and assuring the safety
and quality of water, food, air, and other resources necessary for health. All
of these services require coordinated action at the local, state, and national
1The committee’s previous two reports (IOM, 2011a,b) listed the 10 Essential Public Health
Services, a list that serves as a cornerstone to descriptions of the work of public health depart-
ments and their community partners.
13
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14 FOR THE PUBLIC’S HEALTH: INVESTING IN A HEALTHIER FUTURE
levels, and public health departments have essential roles in informing and
mobilizing public- and private-sector efforts.
The U.S. public health infrastructure—the constellation that includes
federal, state, and local public health agencies, laboratories, and informa-
tion technology and surveillance networks—is fragmented and lacks the
resources necessary to carry out its roles effectively and ensure a basic level
of health protection for all Americans. Historically, public health responsi-
bilities emerged as primarily locally- and state-based, with the federal gov-
ernment intervening in the course of some epidemics. At the federal level,
the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) came together in
piecemeal fashion in the 20th century, as discussed in more detail in the 2003
IOM report on the future of the public’s health. Today, this highly complex
infrastructure is supported by diminishing resources, and that poses grave
threats to and the loss of important opportunities for the nation’s health.
Over 52,200 combined state and local public health jobs have been lost since
2008 (17 percent of the state and territorial public health workforce and 22
percent of the local public health workforce [ASTHO, 2012]).
The underinvestment in public health has ramifications for the nation’s
overall health status, for its financially-strained health care delivery system,
and, the committee argues, for its economic vitality and global competitive-
ness. Although 2012 is a challenging time in national and world economic
history, the nation’s portfolio of investments in health must be reconsidered
and rebalanced to lead the way toward an invigorated “health system,”
economy, and society. In referring to the nation’s health system,2 the com-
mittee means not only the component that delivers medical care, but the
intersectoral system that was first introduced in the 2003 report The Future
of the Public’s Health in the 21st Century (IOM, 2003) and that comprises
the governmental public health agencies and various partners, including
communities, the health care delivery system, employers and businesses, the
mass media, and the education sector.
At a time when expenditures on medical care are limiting its ability to
make crucial investments in other arenas that are critical for the quality
of life and economic health of Americans, the committee believes that a
strong governmental public health infrastructure can mobilize strategies
that reduce the occurrence of disease and injury, offset the need for ever-
2In its report on measurement, the system was redefined by the committee as simply “the
health system” because “the modifiers public and population are poorly understood by most
people other than public health professionals and may have made it easier to misinterpret or
overlook the collective influence and responsibility that all sectors have for creating and sus-
taining the conditions necessary for health. In describing and using the term the health system,
the committee [sought] to reinstate the proper and evidence-based understanding of health as
not merely the result of medical or clinical care but the result of the sum of what we do as a
society to create the conditions in which people can be healthy (IOM, 1988)” (IOM, 2011b).
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15
INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT
more costly medical interventions, and foster the productivity and wellbe-
ing of the nation. Fulfilling that promise requires strategic expenditures to
ensure capable and well-equipped public health agencies in all regions and
greater attention to health promotion and disease prevention in all sectors
of American society.
In previous two reports the committee summarized salient evidence
on the social determinants of health (IOM, 2011a,b). There is substantial
support for the links between health outcomes and factors related to where
people live, learn, work, and play. However, there are gaps in the evidence
on population-based interventions, that is, on what strategies are most ef-
fective in addressing the factors that contribute to poor health outcomes.
The gaps in evidence are in large measure due to failures to invest in build-
ing the knowledge base on population health, including not only research
on population-based interventions but on public health infrastructure,
financing and functioning. Research and experience have demonstrated the
effectiveness of some approaches, but the knowledge has not been opera-
tionalized for reasons that include lack of funding, insufficient political will,
and the requirement to change societal norms. In this report, the committee
offers a vision for a revitalized governmental public health enterprise, and
discusses the financial resources that are needed to ensure an effective public
health infrastructure in all communities.
THE REPORT’S SCOPE
The committee was given the following charge:
Develop recommendations for funding state and local public health
systems that support the needs of the public after health care
reform. Recommendations should be evidence based and imple-
mentable. In developing their recommendations the committee will:
• Review current funding structures for public health
• Assess opportunities for use of funds to improve health outcomes
• Review the impact of fluctuations in funding for public health
• Assess innovative policies and mechanisms for funding public
health services and community-based interventions and suggest
possible options for sustainable funding
The committee’s starting challenge was to explain the boundaries of
governmental public health in its study. The committee began with the rec-
ognition, described in the committee’s previous report on law, that public
health has historically identified health problems, their causes, and potential
solutions without necessarily bearing or assuming the responsibility for
addressing them. In many cases, other government agencies came to be
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16 FOR THE PUBLIC’S HEALTH: INVESTING IN A HEALTHIER FUTURE
charged with responsibilities over aspects of sanitation, safe water, safe food,
and housing, among others (IOM, 2011a, p. 21). Moreover, other areas
of government action and societal investment such as education, housing,
transportation, and urban planning, are also determinants of health whose
links to population health have been documented in existing research. For
the purposes of the present study, the committee acknowledged the breadth
of influences on health and the wide range of societal actors engaged in
acting on the health of the population—public health writ large—but it did
not attempt to review the myriad public- and private-sector funding streams
involved. For reasons first of committee composition and expertise, and
second of data and time limitations, the committee provides little discussion
on private-sector funding for population health, or societal investments in
areas beyond health that may have ramifications for national health status.
In the report, the term “public health” is used to denote the governmental
public health enterprise. At times, however, the report refers to the broader
understanding of public health as the multitude of strategies and actors that
contribute to improving population health, and that is explained in the text.
The report is comprised of four chapters. After the introduction, the
second chapter is devoted to examining how governmental public health
activity (in state and local public health departments) is funded and the re-
quirements placed on public health spending. The third chapter discusses the
administrative changes needed to support the uniform collection and report-
ing of public health financial information (revenues and expenditures), and
the research needed to inform the most efficient and effective use of public
health funding. The fourth and final chapter describes contemporary public
health funding, provides some estimates of need, and discusses options for
generating revenues to ensure stable, sustainable, and adequate funding for
public health defined in this context somewhat narrowly to encompass only
the state and local public health departments.
THE NATION’S HEALTH
The health of a nation’s population is determined by the conditions
that it creates for living, the equity in opportunity that it affords, and the
access to and quality of its medical care delivery system.3 Health in the
United States advanced during the last century, adding approximately 30
years to life expectancy between 1900 and 1999 (CDC, 1999b). More
3The United States entered the 21st century with glaring inadequacies in health and health
care delivery system experiences for vulnerable subsets of the U.S. population due in large
measure to socioeconomic and attendant environmental risks, as well as to inadequate access
to care and variations in clinical practice (Braveman et al., 2011a; de la Plata et al., 2007;
Haider et al., 2008; Lucas et al., 2006; Shafi et al., 2007).
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17
INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT
than two-thirds of that increase was related to public health strategies that
resulted in improvements in conditions for living such as nutrition, water
and workplace safety, and prevention and control of communicable diseases
with immunizations, antibiotics, and outbreak control (Bunker et al., 1994;
CDC, 1999b). Despite its unrivaled wealth, the United States nonetheless
ended the century lagging behind many developed countries in health status
as reflected in indicators of mortality, morbidity, and loss of potential pro-
ductivity. Table 1-1 shows U.S. rankings on life expectancy, infant mortality,
and maternal mortality according to three different sources: the Organisa-
tion for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD),4 which has 34
member countries, including “many of the world’s most advanced countries
but also emerging countries like Mexico, Chile and Turkey” (OECD, 2012);
the United Nations (UN), which provides data on up to 196 countries;5 and
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which provides data on 221 countries
(CIA, 2011).
Medical Costs
Non-communicable, preventable chronic conditions are consuming
increasing and extraordinary amounts of national spending on health, ac-
counting for more than 75 percent of the $2.6 trillion spent each year on
medical care (KFF, 2012). In 2007 and 2008, 23 percent of U.S. adults re-
ported having one chronic medical condition, and an additional 31 percent
reported having two or more (KFF, 2012; Soni, 2011). Chronic medical con-
ditions associated with modifiable risk factors (smoking, nutrition, weight,
and physical activity) represented 6 of the 10 costliest medical conditions6
in the United States with a combined medical care expenditure of $338 bil-
lion in 2008 (Soni, 2011). Those same six largely preventable conditions
accounted for 29 percent of the total increase in U.S. medical care spending
during the 1987-2000 period (Thorpe et al., 2004b, 2010).
The indirect costs associated with preventable chronic diseases—costs
related to diminished labor supply and worker productivity and the resulting
fiscal drag on the nation’s economic output—have been estimated at over
$1 trillion a year (DeVol and Bedroussian, 2007). The nation’s poor health
status and the expense of its medical care delivery system place an enor-
mous burden on the still-weak U.S. economy, the deficit-burdened federal
4The OECD mission is “to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-
being of people around the world” (OECD, 2012).
5The UN data from World Population Prospects, The 2008 Revision includes data for 196
countries (“[o]nly countries or areas with 100,000 persons or more in 2009”), although its
multi-year data and estimates (2005-2010) includes only 146 countries (UN, 2009).
6The 10 are heart disease, cancer, mental disorders, trauma-related disorders, osteoarthritis,
asthma, hypertension, diabetes, back problems, and hyperlipidemia (Soni, 2011).
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18 FOR THE PUBLIC’S HEALTH: INVESTING IN A HEALTHIER FUTURE
TABLE 1-1 U.S. Health Rankings
U.S. Ranking (U.S./Total)
Source Life Expectancy Infant Mortality Maternal Mortality
UN 28/146 32/146 n/a
(2005-2010 data) (2005-2010 data)
OECD 26/34 31/34 25/34
(2007 data) (2007 data) (2007 data)
CIA 50/221 174/222 121/172
(2011 estimated data; in (2011 estimated data) (2011 estimated data)
2010 data, U.S. ranked 49th)
NOTE: n/a = not available.
SOURCES: CIA, 2011; NRC, 2011; OECD, 2011; United Nations, 2009.
budget, and the financial security of many individual households. National
health expenditures in 2010 reached $2.57 trillion, 17.3 percent of gross
domestic product (GDP). Spending is projected to increase to $4.48 trillion,
19.3 percent of GDP, by 2019 (Truffer et al., 2010). Most of that increase
will be due to federal spending on major medical care programs—includ-
ing Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and
subsidies for eligible individuals who are expected to gain health insurance
coverage under the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA).
The last decade’s growth in health care cost has dramatically affected
household budgets, consuming nearly all the gains in income that were real-
ized by the average U.S. family in the decade. Increased insurance premiums,
out-of-pocket costs, and taxes devoted to health care consumed all but $95
of the increase in average monthly income from 1999 to 2009 (Auerbach
and Kellermann, 2011). Family premiums for a typical insurance plan are
estimated to rise 94 percent from 2008 to 2020, from $12,298 to $23,842
(Schoen et al., 2009). During the 10-year period 2009-2019, individual
out-of-pocket expenses are expected to increase by 64 percent (from $284
billion to $466 billion), an average annual increase of 6.3 percent, which is
more than twice the rate of increase in 2009 (CMS, 2010).
The financial impact of increasing health care costs is seen in bank-
ruptcy trends and other signs of household financial insecurity. In two
separate surveys, Himmelstein et al. (2009) reported that the rate of medi-
cal bankruptcies increased 50 percent from 2001 to 2007. The “medical
debtors” were largely insured (75 percent), well-educated, and owners of
homes, and made up 62 percent of the national random sample of 2,314
bankruptcies (Himmelstein et al., 2009). The impact of high medical care
costs was reported in the 2011 Employee Benefits Research Institute’s con-
sumer health confidence survey of adult Americans which found decreased
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19
INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT
savings for retirement (29 percent of respondents); decreased non-retirement
savings (56 percent); increased credit card use (19 percent); delay in going
to the doctor (44 percent); and skipping of medication doses or not filling
prescriptions altogether (26 percent) (Fronstin, 2011).
The high cost associated with the poor health of Americans poses
global competitive disadvantages for the nation in employer and national
costs. Current OECD data show that per capita U.S. health expenditures
are more than two times the OECD average ($7,960 vs. $3,223 in 2009),
and 2-3 times greater than those of such rapidly advancing economies as
Czech Republic, Korea, Poland, and Turkey (OECD, 2010b). Obesity alone
accounts for up to 20 percent of the rise in medical care spending over the
past decade, and obese adults present medical care costs 37 percent greater
than those of their normal-weight counterparts because of their risks of
diabetes, high blood pressure, and related chronic conditions (Thorpe et al.,
2004a). Preventable diseases and injuries are important components of the
labor costs that saddle U.S. employers. It has been estimated that the cost
of treating obese adults was about $147 billion in 2008, that the annual
excess health care cost to private payers per obese adult was $1,140 in 2006
(Finkelstein et al., 2009), and that obese working-age adults (18-65 years)
incurred 37 percent higher annual health care costs than their normal-weight
counterparts (Sturm, 2002). Health risk factors that are highly amenable to
population-based preventive strategies (i.e., smoking, cholesterol, physical
inactivity, and obesity) have strong influences on annual health care costs.
Workers who had medium risk (three or four risk factors) were shown to
incur $1,261 more in annual health care costs than workers who had low
health risk (two or fewer risk factors), and those who had high risk (five
or more risk factors) $3,321 more (Edington, 2001). The economic burden
of excess chronic disease morbidity on employers also includes substantial
adverse effects on productivity due to lost work time (“absenteeism”) and
diminished performance at work because of illness (“presenteeism”) (Collins
et al., 2005; Kessler et al., 2001; Wang et al., 2003). The medical care de-
livery system is expensive today; if it stays on its current course, it will be
unsustainable in the future (CBO, 2011).
Putting Prevention at the Center of National Strategies
An estimated 80 percent of cases of heart disease and of type 2 diabetes
and 40 percent of cases of cancer could be prevented by exercising more
(which might be made possible by, for example, improving green spaces and
increasing neighborhood safety), eating better (made possible by, for ex-
ample, increasing affordability and availability of fresh foods), and avoiding
tobacco (made possible by, for example, sponsoring programs for smoking
prevention and cessation) (see Brownson et al., 2006; CDC, 2011d; Ewing,
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20 FOR THE PUBLIC’S HEALTH: INVESTING IN A HEALTHIER FUTURE
2005; Mokdad et al., 2004; Ver Ploeg et al., 2009; WHO, 2012a; WHO
Commission on Social Determinants of Health, 2008). But the United States
is not making substantial progress in advancing the prevention strategies
needed to support these changes. One-fifth of adults still smoke and half of
adults—and nearly 20 percent of children—are overweight or obese (Cory
et al., 2010). Without system-wide changes, one-third of American adults
will develop diabetes by 2050 (up from one-tenth today) (Boyle et al., 2010).
The current generation of children and young adults in the United States
could become the first generation to experience shorter life spans and fewer
healthy years of life than those of their parents (Olshansky et al., 2005).
Despite the knowledge that most cases of those costly chronic condi-
tions are preventable, the national strategy to address the health crisis is
directed predominantly downstream at the medical care delivery system.
Strategic interventions are aimed at improving coordination of transi -
tions of care (acute hospitals and step down institutions or home care),
strengthening primary care, reforming payments and financial incentives,
modernizing the information system infrastructure, and improving man-
agement of persons with chronic conditions. The Affordable Care Act
includes several provisions that aim to advance population health, and is
a legislative precedent worth building on. However, upstream causes (such
as low educational attainment) of health problems continue to generate
large volumes of new cases that require additional attention and adequate
resources. Success in improving population health and reducing the volume
of cases of non-communicable disease entering the medical delivery system
will require a major strategic focus and aggressive action on root causes.
Homer and Hirsch (2006), among others, have illustrated the system dy-
namics (beginning with social and behavioral risks) that ultimately lead to
increased demand for medical care.7
The committee finds that poor U.S. health status and costly medical
care consumption reflect a failure of the nation’s health system as a whole—
medical care, governmental public health, and other actors—to support
strategies that advance population health. Solutions will require more than
reforms of the delivery and payment systems for medical care. They will
also require greater health system efficiency and more balanced investment
in health, especially in the use of population-level interventions. Better pub-
lic health efforts can reduce the rising prevalence of chronic diseases and
influence other high-priority outcomes, such as injuries, mental illness, and
substance abuse—and simultaneously attenuate the downstream medical
care costs associated with them. Improving the effectiveness of the nation’s
governmental public health infrastructure can contribute to offsetting medi-
cal costs in three ways:
7See Figure 4 in Homer and Hirsch (2006, p. 457).
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21
INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT
1. Population-based public health strategies (such as policies to con-
trol tobacco, reduce motor vehicle injuries, require immunization,
and reshape the social determinants of health) mobilized by this
infrastructure can decrease numbers of cases of disease and injury
(Halpin et al., 2010; see Box 1-1).
2. Public health agencies can use their data surveillance, analysis, and
reporting capabilities to assist the medical care delivery system in
identifying ineffective or inappropriate clinical care and in creating
opportunities to advance population health in the clinical setting.
3. Public health agencies can convene or join partnerships aimed at
creating environments in which people can be healthy.
A growing body of evidence indicates that effective prevention strate-
gies can substantially improve health with little or no additional lifetime
medical spending (i.e., from more potential years of medical care use). A
recent study modeled various scenarios to estimate the potential benefits of
effective interventions to reduce risk factors of adults in mid-life. It found
that those exposed to successful clinical prevention interventions for obesity,
hypertension, and diabetes experienced reduced lifetime medical spending
and lived longer (Goldman et al., 2009). For example, as the population
ages, diabetes prevalence is predicted to rise, peaking at about 34 percent
at the age of 79 years. In the predicted scenarios where interventions had
success rates of 10, 20, or 50 percent, the predicted diabetes prevalence
was lowered to about 30, 25, and 16 percent, respectively (Goldman et al.,
2009). Preventive efforts that decrease the prevalence of risk factors through
non-clinical approaches can be expected to reduce costs further, because
population-based strategies are typically less expensive than clinical ones. A
recent American Heart Association literature review and policy statement,
characterized primordial prevention as a key approach to obtaining value
from decreasing the burden of cardiovascular disease (Weintraub et al.,
2011). In terms of broader economic impact, one study estimates a net gain
in economic growth of $1.2 trillion in real GDP over 20 years because of the
effects of increases in chronic disease prevention efforts on labor productiv-
ity (DeVol and Bedroussian, 2007).
Collaboration Between Public Health and Clinical Care
As shown above, public health prevention strategies can help to contain
medical care costs: they require relatively modest investments; they attack
problems largely by addressing root causes of disease and injuries and
thereby reduce the need for advanced, costly medical care; and they oper-
ate at the level of the population rather than through one-on-one clinical
interventions. At a time when there is little agreement on the most appro-
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22 FOR THE PUBLIC’S HEALTH: INVESTING IN A HEALTHIER FUTURE
BOX 1-1
Public Health Action and Tobacco Control
The history of tobacco control and smoking prevention illustrates how properly
funded and researched public health prevention programs can address 21st cen-
tury challenges population health. Tobacco has long been a public health scourge
responsible for illness and death in both smokers and those around them, and to-
bacco control efforts have decreased rates of smoking-related disease and death
(CDC, 2004, 2005, 2008; IOM, 2009). “Between 1965 and 2005, the percentage
of adults who once smoked and who had quit more than doubled from 24.3 to
50.8 percent and the percentage of adults who have never smoked more than
100 lifetime cigarettes increased by approximately 23 percent from 1965 to 2005”
(IOM, 2007). Those reductions are due largely to public health prevention efforts
that began after the surgeon general’s report was published (IOM, 2007).
State and local smoking prevention programs were paid for through a combi-
nation of excise taxes on the sale of cigarettes, federal funds (for comprehensive
prevention programs), and contributions by philanthropic organizations (IOM,
2007). In 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) replaced
two large programs with one program that provided funds to all 50 states and the
District of Columbia. State programs contained various initiatives (such as public
education, counter advertising, smoke-free workplaces, and increased taxes on
cigarettes). The programs were based on evidence that showed that interventions
focused on individual behavior were “not likely to result in large-scale declines in
smoking prevalence.” Hence the new focus on altering social and environmental
influences (IOM, 2007).
The level of state funding for tobacco control correlates with the success of
smoking prevention programs (Farrelly et al., 2003). Tauras and colleagues (2005)
priate strategies for constraining the growth in medical cost—particularly
strategies that raise concerns about limiting access to services or restraining
innovation and discovery in medical science—cost-effective population-
based approaches offer considerable appeal. That suggests that an essential
component of health care cost control strategies is to attack the occurrence
of disease and injury through population-based strategies, on which a solid
knowledge base and successful track record are available, even as the search
for medical care delivery reforms continues.
Other approaches to cost containment that use public health skills
and competencies would rely on an improved governmental public health
infrastructure to accelerate the movement toward more effective and more
efficient strategies for medical care delivery. For example, some public health
departments are uniquely positioned (although not many have the capacity)
to assess the appropriateness and effectiveness of medical care services that
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INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT
studied state expenditures on tobacco control and found evidence that tobacco
control funding was inversely related to the percentage of young people who
smoked and “the average number of cigarettes smoked by young smokers.” States
with the most comprehensive (and thus resource-intensive) smoking prevention
programs saw a greater decline in smoking rates than the national average (Tauras
et al., 2005). Aggressive state campaigns aimed at adults in the late 1990s also
contributed to a decrease in the prevalence of smoking by adults (IOM, 2007). The
California Tobacco Control Program,a a program with stable funding, was associ-
ated with almost twice the reduction of smoking prevalence from 1989 and 1993
compared with the rest of the United States (Gilpin et al., 2001).
CDC has recommended minimum state spending levels needed for success-
ful tobacco use prevention and cessation (CDC, 2004). However, most states do
not meet that minimum and since 2002 states have needed to cut funding to their
tobacco prevention programs (IOM, 2007). In 2008, Farrelly and colleagues looked
at state tobacco use prevention funding levels from 1995 to 2003 and found that
states that had larger declines in adult smoking spent more on those programs
(they controlled for other factors such as increased tobacco prices) (Farrelly et al.,
2008). Overall, research shows that implementation of comprehensive state to-
bacco prevention and cessation programs that are also adequately funded has
a substantial effect on tobacco use in a state (Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids,
2011; CDC, 1996; Dilley et al., 2011; Farrelly et al., 2003, 2008; Pierce et al., 2011,
also see California Department of Public Health Tobacco Control Program, 2009,
2011; Oregon Health Authority, 2011).
aThe Tobacco Tax and Health Protection Act (Proposition 99) started a 25-cent tax on each
package of cigarettes sold in California and led to the creation of the California Tobacco Con-
trol Program which allowed California to be the first state to fund a comprehensive tobacco
control program (California Department of Public Health, 2009).
can have considerable effects on population health (see example in Box 1-2).
By coupling analytic capabilities with an expanded information system,
public health departments can provide leadership in measuring, monitoring,
and reporting the performance of medical care delivery systems, and enhanc-
ing the transparency of their costs, quality, and outcomes. Similarly, public
health can play an important role in advancing health literacy, consumer
knowledge, and protections and in furthering standard and rigorous pro-
cesses for generating the best community and preventive service recommen-
dations throughout the various agencies of federal and state governments.
The committee’s report on measurement (IOM, 2011b) recommended
collaboration between the public health and clinical care worlds to draw
on the expertise of public health to improve aspects of clinical care both to
advance the health of populations, and to familiarize Americans with the
meaning of high-value (evidence-based, efficient, and appropriate) care,
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34 FOR THE PUBLIC’S HEALTH: INVESTING IN A HEALTHIER FUTURE
life expectancy the goal would require that the United States add an average
of about 1.5 years to the life expectancy of 50-year-old women. Reaching
the top ranking would require the far more ambitious addition of 4.1 years.
The 2006 life expectancy for U.S. men at the age of 50 years was 29.2 years.
The mean in OECD countries was 30.0 (SD, 0.95 years; range, Denmark,
28.2 years, to Australia, 31.5 years), and reaching that would require that
the United States add 0.8 years to the life expectancy of 50-year-old men.
Reaching the top-ranking nation would require a gain of 2.3 years. Those
estimates, however, do not reflect the fact that comparable countries will
continue to make gains; thus, the committee recognizes that the current
gap in life expectancy that needs to be closed is less than the increase that
will be needed to bring U.S. life expectancy to a level comparable with the
average of its peers.
THE CENTRALITY OF PUBLIC HEALTH IN
ACHIEVING HEALTH SYSTEM IMPROVEMENT
Governmental public health plays pivotal roles in a health system that
comprises of multiple societal subsystems whose dynamic interactions create
living conditions that determine health (“social determinants”) (Braveman
et al., 2011b; Marmot et al., 2008; WHO Commission on Social Determi-
nants of Health, 2008; Wilkinson and Marmot, 2003). Public health is an
essential component of a focused national strategy for improving health
and health system performance. Its capabilities have been deployed against
some past major health challenges that were complex and multi-sectoral, for
example, lead toxicity, drinking water fluoridation, motor vehicle safety, and
cigarette smoking. The reduction in lead toxicity in children and households
during the last three decades is due largely to public health leadership in
removing lead from paint and gasoline, screening children and remediating
homes, surveillance, and engagement of the private sector and the medical
care delivery system (Gold et al., 1994). In the case of motor vehicle and
road safety, interventions affecting numerous reinforcing system sectors
were undertaken. The interventions involved families, communities, schools,
workplaces, governments, law enforcement, motor vehicle manufacturers,
and transportation system designers. The systems approach precipitously
reduced motor vehicle fatalities despite dramatic increases in motor vehicle
density and vehicle miles traveled throughout the 20th century (CDC,
1999a). A third example of public health deployment on a major health
challenge is cigarette smoking. Since the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report
on smoking, millions of productive lives have been saved as the prevalence
of smoking among adults has declined (Gold et al., 1994). As in the case of
motor vehicle safety, multi-sectoral interventions involving the mass media,
legislation, employers, schools, health care providers and non-profit orga-
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INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT
nizations have been used to accomplish the reduction (CDC, 1996; Florida
Department of Health, 2012).
Over the last century, governmental public health has been charged, or-
ganized and funded to convene, collaborate and act to control major health
threats from infectious diseases; unsafe water, sanitation, housing, and
transportation; occupation disease and injury; and smoking (CDC, 1999b).
Current major health threats are the result of health system dynamics that
have changed during the last 30 years, altered living conditions and led
to a new constellation of population health challenges in the 21st century
(Wahdan, 1996; WHO, 2012a). Chronic physical and behavioral health
conditions are now the major health impediments to active living and per-
sonal fulfillment and to national economic competitiveness and productivity
(Thorpe et al., 2010; WHO, 2012b). Those non-communicable conditions
are downstream effects of social and physical environments and the personal
behaviors that they influence (Candib, 2007; Gibson et al., 2011; McGinnis
and Foege, 1993; Mokdad et al., 2004). These conditions are of particular
consequence to people of lower income and low educational achievement.
The well-known inequalities that class differences confer are important ob-
stacles to achieving healthy life expectancy comparable with that of other
wealthy nations.
Creating health more efficiently throughout the population will require
both addressing the social and environmental determinants of health and
taking a more systematic and concerted look at the clinical care delivery
system’s effectiveness in creating health through the services that it delivers.
In contrast with the pivotal role occupied by the public health field in leading
interventions directed at the major population health challenges of the last
century, governmental public health departments have not been adequately
funded to take on the complex tasks of designing and implementing strate-
gies that can limit the burden of non-communicable diseases in the United
States. Public health has also not been called on to exercise its data capacity
and analytic skills to assist the medical care delivery system in evaluating
the appropriateness (with respect to underuse and overuse of services) and
success of the care that it furnishes. More rapid change is needed.
The committee views governmental public health as a key health system
force in improving health outcomes and mitigating health expenditures. It
will require a fundamental transformation of its mission (see Chapter 2)
and organization and, adequate and stable funding for deploying public
health experience and skill to meet pressing population health challenges
(Bar-Yam, 2006; Lurie, 2002).
The urgency of a comprehensive national approach to the remediation
of the “upstream” causes of non-communicable diseases, injuries and other
contemporary health challenges, and the urgency of improving the function-
ing of the clinical care system could not be more pronounced. The nation’s
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36 FOR THE PUBLIC’S HEALTH: INVESTING IN A HEALTHIER FUTURE
expenditures on medical care are grossly disproportionate to the quality,
efficiency, and equity with which they being delivered (AHRQ, 2007; Com-
monwealth Fund Commision on a High Performance Health System, 2008,
2009; IOM, 2000, 2001; Leape and Berwick, 2000).
The Affordable Care Act was enacted to address this crisis in health
and in health care costs. It seeks to provide access to care for 32 million
uninsured Americans and to establish a framework of centers and authori-
ties charged to improve quality and control costs by reducing variation
in practice, implementing new models for care, and changing payment
mechanisms and spending by Medicare (Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act, Public Law 111-148). The legislation recognizes the importance
of public health and provides investments in population health initiatives,
including the grants for community transformation and the prevention and
public health trust fund (HHS, 2010a,b, 2011). However, the investment is
small (and has already been substantially reduced) (Benjamin, 2012) com-
pared with medical care interventions and no changes to federal incentives
to states are made to reform the priorities, organization or funding of the
public health infrastructure. The national strategy to address the health cri-
sis is directed predominantly downstream at the locus of care delivery and
only weakly upstream at the causes of poor health that continue to generate
large volumes of new cases in the medical care delivery system.
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
Beginning with its first report (IOM, 2011b), the present committee
has discussed the evidence that some of the most powerful interventions
to improve America’s poor health performance are multi-sectoral public
health interventions and other population-based approaches to health
improvement. Such approaches are informed by high-quality population
health and care delivery performance indicators as discussed in For the
Public’s Health: The Role of Measurement in Action and Accountability
(IOM, 2011b). They will be facilitated by the use of powerful tools of law
and public policy to transform conditions for living (such as education and
the physical and social environment) that impact health, as discussed in the
committee’s second report, For the Public’s Health: Revitalizing Law and
Policy to Meet New Challenges (IOM, 2011a).
In this, its third report, the committee offers guidance for rebalancing
the nation’s portfolio of health investments by revitalizing governmental
public health and, giving it the resources necessary to reign in preventable
diseases, injuries, and their associated costs on a broad national scale. Public
health funding for new mission support, re-organization, and information
management will be essential for improving population health.
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37
INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT
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