American Medical Association President, Susan Bailey, M.D., writes outlines that while overcoming COVID-19 will be a significant victory, the larger campaign to rebuild our public health infrastructure will remain before us.  The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed fundamental flaws in the provision of health care across our nation and exacerbated the tremendous differences in health outcomes tied to race, income and other demographic factors. 

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From Dr. Bailey: 

· Health departments also play a vital role in educating the public about unexpected infectious disease threats as well as evidence-based interventions for mitigation. 

· Adequate funding is necessary to provide these services—but state public health spending has fallen 16% over the past decade. 

· Nearly 40,000 jobs at state and local public health agencies have been eliminated since the 2008 recession. 

· At the same time, federal funding for emergency preparedness and response programs administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been slashed by 50% over the past decade. 

· Persistent disinvestment in governmental public health agencies has limited our ability to effectively respond to SARS-CoV-2 and other crises. 

· We must provide the funding required to upgrade essential functions such as public health surveillance to identify underlying causes and etiologies, which will improve our response to existing and emerging perils. 

· AMA helped shape last year’s revision of the 10 Essential Public Health Services, which were created a quarter-century ago to define the activities public health organizations should undertake in every community.