The White House is proposing a $65 billion pandemic preparedness initiative. What’s missing are essential public health components, like plans on how to equitably distribute medical technologies, as well as ways to improve outreach and information campaigns. Public health can't be an after-thought.
White House Mandates Pfizer Vaccines for Millions of Citizens ...Before the FDA Clinical or Safety Reviews Have Been Made Public
Undoubtedly, spending on research and development of vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics is vital. Equally important, however, is ensuring that developed products are distributed equitably and affordably, that there is sufficient supply everywhere, and that intensive, targeted outreach is part and parcel of any vaccination, treatment, and testing campaign.
Further, the White House plan omits inclusion of a substantial amount of investment in the long-term sustainability of state and local public health. Local public health departments have lost 55,000 jobs since the 2008 recession. And, the problem of a resource-constrained public health sector goes back many decades. In essence, as the sociologist Paul Starr, public health in the U.S. has been relegated to a secondary status. It’s less prestigious than clinical medicine and poorly financed.