Health Community Warns Against Rising Tide of Preventable Illness and Death from Chronic Disease as well as Increased Racial Health Disparities During the COVID-19 Pandemic

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Paige Rohe, prohe@chronicdisease.org, 404-924-8295

ATLANTA (March 12, 2021) –  Today, the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors, on behalf of 20 of the nation’s largest and most influential public health associations and organizations, delivered letters to the leadership of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health, Human Services, Education and Related Agencies and of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies. The text of the letter and signatories, including that of former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden, is as follows:

Dear Chair Murray and Chair DeLauro and Ranking Members Blunt and Cole:

On behalf of the undersigned organizations, we are writing to ask for your support for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC), National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP) in the FY 2022 appropriations process. We urge you to triple NCCDPHP’s budget to $3.75 billion, which is critically needed to address chronic disease conditions that account for more than 90% of the nation’s $3.5 trillion in annual healthcare costs – many of which are preventable.

The COVID-19 pandemic has unmasked the effects of systemic racism on health across the United States, highlighting the way poverty, poor housing, pollution, and food deserts, among other factors, combine to make Black, Latinx (i.e., Spanish-speaking), and Native American and Indigenous communities more ill than others. The disproportionate rates of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in Black, Latinx, and other non-white populations reflect the disproportionate rate at which these groups suffer many chronic conditions. And the lack of response to their needs throughout this pandemic – such as the fact that testing for Black and Latinx Americans happens later in COVID-19 disease progression – is evidence to the way our public health system fails to care for these marginalized communities.

Financially, racial health disparities are associated with substantial annual economic losses in the U.S., including an estimated $35 billion in excess healthcare expenditures, $10 billion in illness-related lost productivity, and nearly $200 billion in premature deaths. Concerted efforts to reduce health disparities – in addition to addressing chronic disease as a whole – would have immense economic value.

The pandemic has also led to an economic downturn with millions of Americans losing their jobs and potentially their health coverage. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) worked to address gaps in the healthcare system that left people without health insurance and the number of uninsured, nonelderly Americans declined by 20 million, a historic low in 2016. Unfortunately, that number has grown over the last three years, and 31 million Americans have no coverage. 

Most uninsured people have at least one worker in the family. Families with low incomes are more likely to be uninsured–with adults more likely to be uninsured than children and people of color at higher risk for being uninsured. Three in 10 uninsured adults in 2019 went without needed medical care due to cost, and uninsured people are less likely than those with insurance to receive preventive care and services for major health conditions and chronic diseases. Additional funding at NCCDPHP will provide preventive care and services to those who most need it. It is essential that the dual strategies of improved access to care (health coverage) and science-based public health programs focused on multilevel education, support, risk reduction, and coordination with states and communities be brought to bear on these devastating conditions.

Concurrently, as we work to battle the pandemic, the public health workforce at the national, state, and local level has shrunken in comparison to the rising demand. As part of the White House goal for adding 100,000 workers, these additional resources can support the key expertise required at the national level, the organization and coordination of resources currently lacking at state health agencies, and the key workforce for localities at local health agencies and other partners, including not-for-profits and providers.