More than $176 million has been allocated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to support 48 public health partners to strengthen public health systems.
CDC's goal with the National Partners Cooperative Agreement is to fund organizations that have the capability, expertise, resources, and national reach to support public health infrastructure and workforce needs. The funding mechanism began in 2008 and since that time, CDC has awarded more than $2.5 billion in funding to more than 70 public health partners.
As part of the agreement, the recipient organizations will receive the $176 million in funding for the first year of a 5-year cycle. This funding will help partners increase the knowledge, skill, and ability of the public health workforce to deliver essential services, improve organizational and systems capacity and capability building to address health priorities, and advance the nation's public health infrastructure and performance.
"By working together with our valued partners, we can build a resilient public health system capable of addressing evolving challenges," said Leslie Ann Dauphin, P.hD., director of CDC's Public Health Infrastructure Center, in a statement. "These awards will help build a strong public health infrastructure with enhanced ability to detect and control diseases, promote healthy lifestyles, and provide essential healthcare services to all communities.”
One of the recipients is Cornell University. “This partnership is critical because it amplifies our collective impacts on pressing public health challenges in New York State and around the nation,” said Alexander Travis, V.M.D., Ph.D., director of Cornell Public Health and founding chair of the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health, in a statement.
Gen Meredith, O.T.R., Dr.P.H., M.P.H., associate director of Cornell Public Health, noted that this is an important development given the decades of stagnant funding that has led to overstrained public health infrastructure and capabilities. “The shared investment in public health systems strengthening during the COVID-19 emergency response was encouraging, and long overdue,” she said in a statement. “It is inspiring to see the CDC is committed to extending those investments so that we are not only prepared for what the future might bring, but are also able to amplify the core tenets of public health in ways that acknowledge and address health disparities.”
Previous recipients used National Partners Cooperative Agreement funds to support various public health initiatives, such as:
• Developing a rural public health curriculum for public health professionals and students interested in improving their skills in rural public health competencies (e.g., social determinants of health in rural communities and finding solutions to rural health disparities).
• Strengthening the infrastructure and capacity of state, territorial, and local health departments to investigate, analyze, and share data on drug overdoses to enhance surveillance efforts.
• Creating a tool and best practices to help community-serving organizations work with schools and parents to improve comprehensive support for adolescent mental health.
