Drafter
Clerk 11/03/2016
Title
A RESOLUTION calling on the Washington state legislature to recognize that public health is essential and to provide the critical down payment to support core services in all communities and allow public health to rebuild its statewide system with added efficiency.
Body
WHEREAS, the public health system in Washington provides the foundation for the larger health-care framework, working to prevent illness and disease while supporting the work of community partners, and
WHEREAS, tracking, responding to, and preventing costly food and water contamination and disease outbreaks is essential to protecting the public's health, and
WHEREAS, state and local public health officials, together with local leaders, have identified an agreed upon set of core public health services that should be available for every Washingtonian, and
WHEREAS, after a century of increasing life expectancies, today these gains are threatened by new and more complex diseases, continued tobacco use and preventable chronic diseases, putting today's children at risk of becoming the first generation to have shorter life expectancies than its parents, and
WHEREAS, the public's well-being is also threatened by public healths inability to meet its basic responsibility to provide these core services due to changes in its funding structure, complex and new diseases, and growing populations; and
WHEREAS, the motor vehicle excise tax was repealed in 2000, leaving the public health system without an adequate and sustainable funding source, and
WHEREAS, Washington state's population has grown by more than one million residents since 2000, and is expected to grow by another two million residents by 2025, and
WHEREAS, Washington state spends less on public health protection, at $38.08 per person, than other states such as Idaho, at $54.35 per person, and Wyoming, at $89.75 per person, and
WHEREAS, it now takes Public Health - Seattle & King County forty percent longer ...
Click here for full text