Here I am, your new health officer, delivering my debut editorial as if I were holding a cardboard flap at your freeway exit. My sign reads, “Public health needs your help!”
Although I am new to the Snohomish Health District, I am very familiar with the struggle to adequately fund local public health programs and services. You can help secure funding by asking your elected state officials to support two bills before the Legislature.
SHB 1825 and SSB 5729 would provide up to $100 million over the next two years to support local public health activities statewide. The funds would come from existing taxes on tobacco, not from new taxes. This solution comes from a bipartisan panel of legislators who noted that public health funding has been inadequate for many years, and has worsened over the past seven years.
(The full report is available at www.leg.wa.gov/documents/joint/PHF/FinalReport.pdf)
This new funding would replace the support public health lost in 1999 due to repeal of the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax. The Legislature backfilled 90 percent of the loss, but flat funding since then left public health agencies without enough money to keep up. This situation is not healthy for any of us.
In Snohomish County, these funds would allow us to improve monitoring and control of infectious diseases, and enhance our immunization program. We could better serve new mothers and their infants, address the increasing challenges of chronic conditions such as obesity and diabetes, and better prepare for emergencies requiring mass vaccinations or drug treatments. And we would carefully evaluate our performance to ensure that Snohomish County residents are getting their money’s worth.
The great advances in our health came mostly from public health actions. We take for granted the healthy air we breathe, the clean water we drink, the safe food we eat. It was not always so.
A century ago, Washington residents died of typhoid fever, cholera, whooping cough, tetanus, diphtheria, polio, tuberculosis, syphilis, influenza and smallpox. Those largely disappeared from our communities due to improved sanitation and water treatment, immunizations, and aggressive continuing public health management of infectious diseases.
In this century, we face new challenges to our community’s health, including HIV, SARS, pandemic influenza, bioterrorism, drug-resistant tuberculosis and obesity. We need more dollars to do the work.
Snohomish County can boast one of the best local health agencies in the country. The $100 million request before the Legislature is a drop in the state’s health-care bucket of $9 billion over the next biennium. It is a wise investment, the best we can make in improving the health of all Washington residents through the network of local public health departments. The Legislature should move this legislation forward now.
Buddy, can you spare a dime? Please tell Olympia to help local public health.
Dr. Gary Goldbaum became health officer of the Snohomish Health District on Feb. 1. He replaces Dr. M. Ward Hinds, who retired after leading the district for 20 years.
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