Why Public Health Works Better With Flexible Funding
Success StoriesBefore the Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG), much of California’s public health funding was prescriptive, inflexible, and often disconnected from local priorities. That meant local health departments had limited ability to invest in the people, systems, and infrastructure that would best meet the needs of their specific communities.
In this video, Mary Macaluso, Assistant Deputy Director in the Regional Public Health Office at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), explains how CDPH is using PHIG funding to change that reality. By braiding and disbursing funding from PHIG and California’s Future of Public Health initiative, CDPH is supporting 50 local health jurisdictions – many of them small, rural, and underserved – to rebuild core public health infrastructure. The impact is already visible. Some local health departments have hired epidemiologists for the first time, allowing them to analyze disease data at the local level. This helps every community respond more effectively to outbreaks when they occur and better prepare for future health threats. PHIG is helping California build a public health system that is durable, flexible, and responsive to community needs.
Video Transcript
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
How did public health funding work before PHIG?
I think in California, prior to the Public Health Infrastructure Grant (PHIG) funding – also known in California as the California Strengthening Public Health Initiative – most of our funding sources, at both the state and local level, were typically categorical funding.
Often, those funding sources require recipients to hire a certain position, follow a certain plan, or do a specific activity in their community. Those requirements were often prescribed by the state or federal government, without allowing the local level to really drive priorities for their own communities.
How are you supporting local health departments?
The California Department of Public Health has been administering Public Health Infrastructure Grant A2 funding to 50 of the 61 local health jurisdictions across the state. Many of those jurisdictions are our small, rural, and most underserved communities that are really in need of core infrastructure to rebuild their public health systems.
The Public Health Infrastructure Grant and the Future of Public Health funds, which is a state initiative, work in a complementary way to support the growth of permanent personnel; to develop, enhance, and modernize technical infrastructure and systems; and to expand technical expertise and workforce capacity in areas that are most critical for serving the community, such as infectious disease, environmental health, community engagement, and health education, along with other technical advancements that help support and sustain California’s public health infrastructure system.
Why is PHIG funding important?
Small local jurisdictions that have never had an epidemiologist before are, for the first time, instituting analysis of critical data at the local level related to community disease burden. It’s critical to maintain these programs so that we are ready to respond and to support our communities – not if, but when the next infectious disease emergency occurs. We want to shore up our infrastructure, and we want to be able to build an infrastructure that is flexible and able to pivot to emerging needs and priorities across the state – and across the country, really.