When disease prevention is done right, it often goes unnoticed. When it isn't, disease spreads, people get sick, and they die. After the threat passes, investment in public health typically declines.
Prevention is difficult to measure; it's akin to proving a negative. However, an unprepared and inadequately organized public health system presents a serious challenge to the nation. America currently lacks such a system.
Disease does not respect state borders. If states differ in their approaches to managing a health crisis, as they did during the Covid-19 pandemic, disease can spread more easily. The lack of coordination led to many lives lost due to differing practices among state health systems.
Partisan politics exacerbated the situation. Certain religious beliefs that prevented trust in vaccines further complicated efforts.
"When science is denied, and treatment and prevention methods, notably vaccines, are questioned, disease spreads," said Linda Stamato.
The United States was unprepared for Covid-19 and remains unprepared for future pandemics. Bird flu poses an emerging threat with three known human infections reported recently. Cambodia has detected eleven cases with five fatalities due to its robust tracking system aiding early detection and preventive interventions.
Neighboring nations and the United States lag behind in this regard. Without proper data collection on bird flu, preventing another pandemic becomes challenging.
While bird flu captures headlines, there is also an increase in communicable diseases previously thought conquered:
♦ Polio is making a comeback after three decades of eradication.
♦ Mumps is rising again; it can cause brain inflammation (encephalitis), deafness, or infertility later in life.
♦ Measles has re-emerged despite being eliminated from the U.S., as vaccine avoidance increases. Measles can produce pneumonia and ear infections and can lead to neurological complications if it spreads to the brain.
The MMR vaccine — preventing measles, mumps, and rubella — is safe and about 97% effective. Despite this efficacy rate, parental opt-outs have increased significantly over recent years.
As more parents "free ride" off community immunity's dwindling levels, outbreaks occur more frequently. This trend threatens to erase much of the nation's public health progress as preventable diseases return.
"Misinformation has penetrated deeply into public imagination," Stamato stated. "It’s becoming less about truth than personal identity."
A federal approach to public health is deemed essential by experts like Stamato: "If we learn nothing else from our nation’s response to the Covid epidemic," she noted pointedly.
Public health work remains underfunded and undervalued; thus effective strategies are undermined without sound data collection systems that epidemiologists rely on for timely interventions.
The CDC can only make recommendations — insufficient compared to a comprehensive federal program required for cohesive action across states.
PBS's four-part Frontline series highlights these limitations within America's fragmented approach while showcasing how public health advancements have saved countless lives but now face risks from underfunding and skepticism toward science.
One example of misinformation consequences comes from Florida where measles cases spiked partly due to parental defiance of vaccination guidance supported by state authorities allowing unvaccinated children into schools despite exposure risks.
Public health cannot be deprioritized amid current challenges; adopting a federal approach must become an American priority particularly during these times shaped by Covid-19 realities concludes Linda Stamato who serves as Senior Policy Fellow at New Jersey State Policy Lab alongside co-directorship roles at Edward J Bloustein School's Center for Negotiation Conflict Resolution.
