Older adults are the fastest growing demographic of the U.S. population. This year, 10,000 Americans will reach age 65 on a daily basis.
Public Health departments and systems can make important contributions to the health and productivity of older Americans. Trust for America’s Health and The John A. Hartford Foundation are partnering with state and local health departments to help them implement a public health framework within their department activities to support the health and well-being of their older adult residents. Learn more about the initiative at Age-Friendly Public Health Systems – Trust for America’s Health.
Healthy aging initiatives should involve multiple sectors of a community and should implement evidence-based programs to reduce social isolation and risk factors for illness and injury among the older adult population.
Healthy students are better learners, yet many schools are not able to deliver the conditions that support student health – conditions such as access to in-school health services, a clean and safe school building, nutritious food, and time and appropriate space for physical activities.
Delivering health services in schools is a key strategy for improving access to healthcare for children, including those in underserved populations. Furthermore, incorporating health and wellness into schools’ culture and environment will help close the educational achievement gap and put today’s students on a path to healthy and productive lives.
Health and well-being involve more than treating illness. Fostering optimal health means understanding the factors that lead to both illness and health. A modern public health system serves as a community’s chief health strategist. Such a system uses the best available evidence to inform strategies, policies and programs to improve and protect the health and well-being of the communities it serves.
TFAH’s mission is to report on and help amplify evidence-based programs and policies that promote healthy behaviors and support conditions in communities, schools and workplaces that foster health and well-being. Our work is designed to advance a national public health system that supports optimal health for every person and community, resolves health disparities and is centered on prevention.
Supporting health is more than treating people when they get sick. Optimal health is determined by many factors, including where we live, go to school, work and play. Creating built environments that foster health and well-being includes working with community partners to ensure access to such things as well-stocked grocery stores, public transportation and recreation facilities.
In addition, the changing climate poses risks to people’s health including a greater number of extreme weather events. Mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate warming and doing so in ways that increases community resilience and advances health equity, by focusing resources on those communities most risk, requires investment and multisector approaches.
Infectious diseases – most of which are preventable – disrupt the lives of millions of Americans every year and have a significant financial impact. COVID-19 is the latest and starkest example. The pandemic caused the deaths of over 1 million Americans and unprecedented disruption in people’s lives from job loss to social isolation and mental distress, to learning loss in children. Additional examples of infectious disease outbreaks include the 2014 Ebola outbreak, the 2015 and 2016 Zika outbreak, and the 2022 Mpox outbreak. Influenza, antibiotic resistant super bugs and food borne illness are additional concerns. Despite these serious and sometimes deadly impacts, investments in infectious disease prevention and control ebb and flow in response to outbreaks.
Examples of the need to protect the public’s health from disease, disasters, and bioterrorism abound. The COVID-19 pandemic is a stark example. In addition, during 2023 the U.S. experienced 25 weather-related events that each caused over $1 billion dollars in damages in addition to tragic loss of lives. During August of 2023, an estimated 57 million people were living under an excessive heat warning putting them at risk of heat-related illnesses.
As a nation, we need to do more to ensure that we are adequately prepared to protect the public’s health during emergencies including providing increased and sustained public health funding and fostering multi and cross sector planning and collaboration.
Over one million Americans struggle with a substance misuse disorder. Alarmingly, we are experiencing a set of epidemics, as more than one million people have died in the past decade from drug overdoses, alcohol misuse and suicide. If these trends continue, drugs, alcohol and suicide could take the lives of an estimated 1.6 million Americans in the next 10 years.
Many factors contribute to drug and alcohol misuse and suicide, including family and social relationships, social and emotional development, childhood trauma, lack of economic opportunity and the cycle of poverty. There is an urgent need to invest in evidence-based, multisector programs and interventions that help people at crisis points and that address the root causes of these deaths.
Obesity is one of the nation’s most pressing health problems and is related to the growing number of Americans living with a chronic disease such as heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes. TFAH’s State of Obesity: Better Policies for a Healthier America report found that four in ten American adults have obesity, and those rates continue to climb nationwide and within population groups.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a stark illustration of what can happen when the public health system is not adequately funded but infectious disease is just one of the public health challenges the country faces. More than half of all Americans live with at least one chronic disease. Deaths of despair, those associated with alcohol, drugs or suicide, are also continuing to increase. In addition, the threat from droughts, floods, wildfires and other weather-related events is also on the rise.
Despite these threats, federal funding for public health is less today than it was a decade ago. This persistent underfunding of the country’s public health system has led to serious gaps in our readiness to respond to disease outbreaks, natural disasters and other health emergencies.
Prevention and Public Health Fund Detailed Information
