WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 5, 2009 – Partnership for Prevention today urged Senate leaders to preserve funding in the proposed economic stimulus package for health and wellness programs that would help build up the nation’s public health infrastructure.

“This funding is critically needed to strengthen the nation’s public health infrastructure, restore jobs lost in public health departments and laboratories and create new jobs in the public health and wellness sector,” Partnership’s Interim President Corinne G. Husten, MD, PHD, said  in letters  to Sens. Tom Harkin, (D-Iowa), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.)

Husten said the country already faces serious manpower shortages in critical public health positions, and that the effects of those shortages are becoming more acute as state and local health departments are cutting public health staff positions due to the economic downturn at the same time as the increasing ranks of the unemployed have begun to overwhelm public services. 
The aging of the public health workforce is exacerbating the problem, Husten said, as 20 percent of workers in state health agencies will be eligible for retirement within the next three years, Husten added, while about 20 percent of local health workers will be retirement eligible by 2010.

“Public health workers not only help to keep America healthy and productive, but they also form our first line of defense whenever health emergencies arise through disease, disasters, or bioterrorism” Husten said. “We must invest now to ensure that we have a public health work force that is large enough with the expertise needed to meet our current and our future health challenges.”