There is not any complete knowledge on authorities public well being spending and staffing within the U.S., and KHN and the Associated Press spent months gathering completely different datasets, every measuring a barely completely different idea of “public health,” into a singular repository of public well being knowledge on the native, county and state ranges.
Now, we’re releasing our public well being infrastructure knowledge on Github for journalists, researchers and readers to make use of.
The U.S. public well being system has been starved for many years and lacks the assets to confront the worst well being disaster in a century. Since 2010, spending for state public well being departments has dropped by 16% per capita and spending for native well being departments has fallen by 18%, in keeping with a KHN and AP evaluation of presidency spending on public well being. At least 38,000 state and native public well being jobs have disappeared because the 2008 recession, leaving a skeletal workforce for what was as soon as seen as one of many world’s high public well being techniques.
Read the full story and methodology behind this investigation.
Some datasets observe solely state public well being techniques, not companies that function at a county, metropolis or regional stage. Other knowledge, together with some from the U.S. Census Bureau, covers spending on all non-hospital well being care. Public well being efforts are combined in with the prices of offering native medical transportation, operating neighborhood clinics and providing psychological well being companies.
Many states don’t observe native well being division spending and staffing in any respect, however we gathered it from a number of states that had it out there in PDF experiences, Excel information and on-line dashboards. We’re making this cleaned and standardized knowledge out there so native journalists and others can dig into their public well being techniques with out having to repeat the identical knowledge janitorial work.
To obtain the information and skim the complete technical methodology, go to our ‘Underfunded and Under Threat’ Github repository.
