APTR Joins Over 110 Organizations to Call on Senate to Oppose Cuts to Prevention Fund

APTR joined Trust for America’s Health, American Public Health Association, Association of Public Health Laboratories, Big Cities Health Coalition, Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids, Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, National Association of County and City Health Officials, and more than 100 other organizations representing public health, healthcare, research, social services, and other sectors, to release a letter to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee opposing a committee proposal to cut $980 million from the Prevention & Public Health Fund (“the Prevention Fund”) to pay for other health legislation.

The Prevention Fund is a critical source of funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies across Health and Human Services. The Prevention Fund invests in states and communities across the nation to strengthen systems and the workforce that allow us to provide immunizations, detect and control outbreaks, and prevent illness and early deaths from tobacco and chronic diseases. It supports activities outside one’s doctor’s office – separate and distinct from individual health concerns and treatments.

In an already challenging budget environment, this would further endanger the health of Americans. These cuts would impact not only health programs, but also labor and education, as it will leave a significant gap in base appropriations for the Labor-HHS-Education spending bill that will need to be backfilled. This pay-for has far reaching consequences for all ofthe  programs that fall under the spending bill’s purview.

The letter in part reads:

“The nation can no longer afford to underfund public health…. Despite spending more than any other high-income nation on treating disease, the U.S. has substantially worse health outcomes, with life expectancy declining in recent years. Now is the time to invest in public health and prevention…

Cuts to the Prevention Fund will translate into funding shortfalls in programs that states have long relied upon to keep their residents healthy and safe. In its first 14 years (FY2010–23), the Prevention Fund has invested more than $12.3 billion in resources to states, localities, and tribal and community organizations in support of critical prevention and public health programs. These investments include the 317 immunization program that enables prevention of outbreaks, epidemiologists and public health laboratory grants in every state and territory to detect and investigate outbreaks and prevent further infections, the Preventive Health and Health Services (Prevent) Block Grant that enables states and localities to address their most pressing health concerns, supporting cancer screenings, and other critically important programs. Across the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Prevention Fund supports programs such as suicide prevention, Alzheimer’s disease prevention, and chronic disease self-management.

Funding prevention not only saves lives, but it also saves money. The Prevention Fund’s Tips from Former Smokers Campaign alone saved an estimated $7.3 billion in smoking-related healthcare costs from 2012 to 2018 and helped more than one million Americans quit smoking for good. Public health funding has not kept up with the range of threats that public health must address. For many of these conditions, we know what works, but public health does not have the resources to address these growing health threats.”

The full text of the letter is linked here.
Information about the Prevention and Public Health Fund can be found here.

The Healthy People Curriculum Task Force, convened by the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research, is seeking health professions and public health faculty with expertise in population health to be appointed to a national curriculum revision workgroup for one year beginning in October 2023.  Faculty experts are needed to serve on four component-specific workgroups of the Clinical Prevention and Population Health Curriculum Framework (Framework), a national teaching resource that provides a common core of knowledge for clinical health professions about individual and population‐oriented prevention and health promotion efforts. The Framework was first published by the Task Force in 2004 and undergoes revision every five years.

Curriculum Revision Workgroups

1. Foundations of Population Health: Quantitative and analytic skills used to assess, compare, describe, and monitor the health of populations.
2. Clinical Preventive Services & Health Promotion: Evidence-based, health promotion and disease prevention interventions in the clinical setting.
3. Clinical Practice & Population Health: Opportunities and disciplines that require individual- and population-based health perspectives.
4. Health Systems & Health Policy: Systems and policies that help to govern the health and healthcare system, including collaborations between the clinical care and public health communities.

Curriculum Revision Workgroups Charge

The role of the workgroups is to address redundancy, gaps, and recommend major and minor editing for their respective Framework Component. Workgroups will also review edits proposed to other Components and may participate in the open comment period revisions and final review.  The Workgroups will assemble comments and proposed edits into one document for sharing with the Task Force and other curriculum revision workgroups in December 2023, March 2024, and May 2024. 

Responsibilities of Workgroup Member

• Contributes to the development of themes and general goals for the Component revision, considering health equity, the pandemic, and changes to global health since the last revision.
• Provides comments and specific editing suggestions (in MS Word Track Changes or Google Doc).
• Compares and aligns proposed edits with content of other Framework Components.
• Identifies evidence-based resources that support the Component’s content and revisions as needed.
• Attends quarterly virtual meetings of the workgroup. 
• Reviews draft and final versions of the Curriculum Framework.
• Participates in dissemination efforts.

Eligibility to Serve on Workgroups

The Task Force encourages applicants from diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and geographic areas. Individuals wishing to serve on a workgroup must be either an APTR faculty member or member representative (departmental membership) or nominated by one of the organizations represented on the Task Force.

Length of Service: 

October 2023 through December 2024

Estimated Time Commitment:

3 hours/month October-May; 1 hour/month June-December 

How to Serve

Complete the Self-Nomination Form by September 22, 2023.  Workgroup members will be selected to balance expertise and perspectives on each workgroup. Appointments will be made by mid-October.

Questions?

Contact vsc@aptrweb.org

SELF-NOMINATION FORM

The Association for Prevention Teaching and Research joined 85 national organizations committed to improving the health and well-being of our nation’s families to express our strong support for the bipartisan Preventing Maternal Deaths Reauthorization Act of 2023 (H.R.3838/S.2415). This legislation continues crucial federal support for the state-based maternal mortality review committees (MMRCs) that review pregnancy-related deaths to identify causes and make recommendations for the prevention of future mortalities. With our nation’s maternal mortality rate on the rise, we urge you to swiftly pass the Preventing Maternal Deaths Reauthorization Act. It is critical that Congress does everything in its power to address the maternal mortality crisis and work towards solutions to prevent future, unnecessary deaths.

The Association for Prevention Teaching and Research joined more than 400 other national, state, and local medical, public health, and research organizations to urge Congress to support funding for gun violence prevention research. We urged the Senate and House to support providing $35 million for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), $25 million for the National Institute of Health (NIH), and $1 million for the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) for firearm morbidity and mortality prevention research as part of Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations. This research is critical for developing a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to reducing firearm-related violence, including suicides, violent crime, and accidental shootings.

View Full Gun Violence Prevention Sign-on Letter