Cuts in Health Department put everyone at risk

From ensuring safe food, safe milk, and safe water to preventing the spread of infectious diseases, from providing emergency preparedness readiness, to promoting healthier, safer communities — these are all a part of the health care system in Mississippi that is called public health. A system that is in place as a first line of defense in protecting you and your community. It protects and benefits everyone.

That very system is in jeopardy in Mississippi because our Legislature failed to recognize the need for a basic public health infrastructure designed to protect us all from the spread of disease, to support us through natural and man-made disasters and to promote a healthier and thus wealthier Mississippi.

Our astute Legislature has cut another $4 million from an already underfunded and undervalued component of our health care system. A system that has already closed health department clinics and made many others part time, reduced service delivery capacity and sent home dedicated public health professionals across the state and left 90 local positions vacant and unfunded in an attempt to manage with reduced funds.

Some legislators may not have been aware of the budget maneuvering details and last-minute mistakes before their vote to further diminish the backbone of our fragile public health system by cutting the Department of Health’s budget by another 11 percent. Others knew and failed to act!

Whether intentional or not, the results of this budget process on public health funding will have negative consequences on all of our citizens and communities — a state with many of the worst health indicators in the country. Shameful!

To gain some perspective on public health funding in Mississippi, the non-partisan Trust for America’s Health produces a report that analyzes state funding support for public health. Their latest data for FY 2013-14 ranks Mississippi 47th in support.

Our state funding for that year was $36,739,194 or $12.28 per person. The average for our neighboring states (Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee) was $30.65 per person. Louisiana received more than $71 million in state funding — twice that of Mississippi.

Also by comparison, the Department of Corrections receives more than $326 million in state funds ($112 per person) or nine times the amount of the Mississippi State Department of Health. Yet we need to cut the Department of Health’s budget by another $4 million or 11 percent while others are cut 3 percent or less. Go figure!

Every member of our medical community and every citizen should be outraged at this complacency toward public health in Mississippi.

The department is now placed in a situation of curtailing activities that will have consequential effects on protecting our citizens.

If you eat in restaurants, if you drink from public water systems, if you have your child in a licensed day care center, if you have a parent or aunt in a licensed nursing home, or if you want to protect yourself from the spread of disease, then you should be appalled by the impact this latest budget cut to the Department of Health will have.

Please join our public health professionals all across Mississippi by contacting your state representatives, the lieutenant governor and the governor to express your desire for immediate resolution to this public health funding crisis — to protect all Mississippians.

This story was originally published July 5, 2016 at 12:41 PM with the headline "Cuts in Health Department put everyone at risk."