Urge CDC to Ensure Prevention Funds Emphasize Neighborhood Strategies to Reach Communities Most in Need
Last month, President Obama signed the $1.1 trillion spending bill that funds the federal government for fiscal year 2014. The bill advances prevention in several ways. Most importantly, it maintains the Prevention and Public Health Fund, the nation’s largest source of dedicated prevention funding and establishes new Community Prevention Grants. (For more information on the spending bill and its impacts on prevention, see our earlier alert here.)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now considering how to allocate these funds, and it’s incumbent on prevention champions to keep pushing for a comprehensive approach to community health and wellness. We need to make our voices heard by the CDC and our elected representatives in the coming weeks.
A new statement from the Convergence Partnership—a collaborative of foundations and healthcare organizations working to ensure that every community fosters health, prosperity and wellness—helps to do just that. In particular the Partnership urges that funds awarded through new Community Prevention Grants and allocated by the diabetes, heart disease and stroke prevention programs aim to:
- Maintain equity as a core outcome
- Emphasize children and families
- Support comprehensive approaches and multi-sector collaboration
- Emphasize community-level changes, momentum and leadership
- Allow community partners to take the lead and give them flexibility to serve local needs
- Build connections between clinical and community prevention efforts
This week, we’re asking you to help make it clear – to our legislators, state health leaders, and the media – that prevention funding serves a vital need and that the focus on equity, collaboration, and community solutions cannot be lost. Please share the Convergence Partnership’s statement broadly with your networks, and consider writing and sharing similar recommendations and lessons from your community’s prevention efforts. We’ll keep you informed as new opportunities to influence the prevention agenda unfold in the coming weeks.
