Fleeting Fixes, Fractured Systems: Confronting the Continuing Crisis of the Public Health Workforce

According to the Staffing Up report by the de Beaumont Foundation and the Public Health National Center for Innovations, the local public health workforce must expand by 80% to ensure the delivery of foundational public health services to all communities." In COVID-19's aftermath, few coul...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAmerican journal of public health (1971) Vol. 115; no. 8; pp. 1184 - 1186
Main Author Castrucci, Brian C.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States American Public Health Association 01.08.2025
Subjects
Budgets
COVID-19
Data systems
Funding
Harassment
Health care
Health services
Infrastructure
Management
Mental disorders
Mental health services
Modernization
Pandemics
Police departments
Policy analysis
Post traumatic stress disorder
Psychological stress
Public health
Rural areas
Workforce
Workforce planning
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN0090-0036
1541-0048
1541-0048
DOI10.2105/AJPH.2025.308184

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Summary:According to the Staffing Up report by the de Beaumont Foundation and the Public Health National Center for Innovations, the local public health workforce must expand by 80% to ensure the delivery of foundational public health services to all communities." In COVID-19's aftermath, few could have anticipated the scale and ferocity of the political backlash against public health: sweeping legislative rollbacks of public health authority, sustained harassment of health officials, and-perhaps most consequentially-the Trump administration's proposal to cut more than $12 billion from the budgets of the CDC and the Health Resources and Services Administration.4 These proposed reductions, now the subject of ongoing legal challenges, threaten to dismantle the very infrastructure the pandemic exposed as dangerously fragile. According to the Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey (PH WINS), 44% of state and local public health employees reported symptoms consistent with posttraumatic stress disorder during the COVID-19 response.5 The pandemic pushed health departments to their operational and emotional limits. Across decades of scholarship and policy analysis, the calls have remained consistent: sustained and flexible funding,8 modernization of data systems,9 and strategic investments in workforce development, including loan repayment programs.10 These priorities are neither new nor contested.
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ISSN:0090-0036
1541-0048
1541-0048
DOI:10.2105/AJPH.2025.308184