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Climate Change: Mastering the Public Health Role

November 2, 2011 Comments off

Climate Change: Mastering the Public Health Role (PDF)
Source: American Public Health Association

Mounting evidence shows that the Earth’s climate is changing. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising of global average sea level.” And for the most part, the American public agrees. In a June 2010 U.S. poll, 61 percent of respondents reported that they believe that global warming is happening, and a majority reported that they worry about it. However, only a minority of those polled reported that they thought global warming would harm them personally. This highlights one of the principal challenges that the public health community faces: to communicate the health impacts of climate change and enhance public readiness to take actions that limit further warming. This guidebook, and the six-part webinar series it represents, takes a first step toward meeting that challenge by bringing a diverse set of experts together to bridge the gap between climate change science and the public health response. It is our hope that this series will not only inform and educate the public, policy-makers and the public health community, but will also serve to engage, empower and energize a generation to confront this “grand challenge.”

Categories: American Public Health Association, climate change, public health

Most ACA health workforce provisions funded to date train clinicians, not public health workers

July 7, 2011 Comments off

Most ACA health workforce provisions funded to date train clinicians, not public health workers
Source: American Public Health Association

A new report shows that while the new health reform law takes important steps to reorient the nation’s health care system toward disease prevention and health promotion, it has thus far failed to adequately invest in the public health workforce, jeopardizing the goals of the sweeping health measure.

Enacted 15 months ago, the Affordable Care Act reauthorized and created several programs that could increase the supply and expertise of the public health workforce — those professionals who oversee community health programs such as immunizations, tobacco cessation, restaurant inspections and other preventive health services. But to date, only 11 of 19 provisions assessed in the report have received funding. Those that have received monies have been funded at substantially lower levels than authorized.

+ The Affordable Care Act’s Public Health Workforce Provisions: Opportunities and Challenges (PDF)

Categories: American Public Health Association, government and politics, health care reform, public health
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