Public health

Public health is the science of keeping our communities and populations healthy – through disease prevention and response, disaster response and emergency preparedness, and preventing food and water contamination.

Public health nurses play a critical role in keeping our communities healthy and safe – from working with moms to ensure babies have a healthy start, to providing immunizations, to disease prevention and response.

Providing public health services is a shared state and local responsibility. Yet new, complex threats and recession budget cuts have made it harder for the public health system to protect and serve Washington's families and communities.

An adequate, stable, and long-term funding source for public health has long been a top priority for WSNA because public health and public health nursing are the foundation of our health care system. It’s time to rebuild our public health services to keep our communities safe, reduce costs for taxpayers, and protect our local economy.

In the 2017 state legislative session, the legislature provided a new, one-time $12 million investment in core public health services. This seed money is essential to support Foundational Public Health Services, especially as it struggles to address the spiking rates of communicable disease across our state. While this new investment is helpful, it is a drop in the bucket toward adequately funding Washington’s public health system to ensure it can track, respond to and prevent disease outbreaks.

We see the effects of the opioid epidemic in our communities, hospitals and clinics.

Federal, state and local governments are responding to the opioid epidemic with initiatives aimed at preventing opioid abuse, identifying effective treatments, and preventing deaths from overdoses.

The Washington State Nurses Association and the American Nurses Association have both taken action to support these efforts.

Resources

• National Council of State Boards of Nursing Opioids Toolkit
  In an effort to prevent overprescribing, many associations, governmental organizations and regulators created specific opioid prescribing continuing education materials, guidelines and tool kits. These materials are gathered in the toolkit.

Washington State Public Health Association