BPH SLP 1 Government Responsibility in Public Health

Government Role in Public Health

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliation

Government Role in Public Health

Government Responsibility in Public Health

The government has a major responsibility in the public health sector to provide and regulate the funding of the health care system. This includes mandatory health and other social insurances for its citizens. The federal branch is responsible for indirect funding and for supporting the state’s medical professionals. They develop federal agencies such as the National Institute of Health (NIH) and Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and provide financial help for their research work (Catlin, 2011). The facilities also provide a basis for the medical workforce to be trained and educated to improve their skills and provide better services. A majority of the responsibilities of the state government are focused on improving public hospitals. They provide funding for ambulances, public dental, and mental health care, whereas the local governments deliver the services to the public directly through preventive and health programs like immunization.

Challenges to Public Health

Public health agencies are facing various challenges, such as limited resources. Health departments in the local government have a major role in the delivery of front-line health care to the public. But this proves to be difficult since the resources available are limited, and the staff members are less than required. The population is also increasing, meaning that the demand for health care is growing and people lack the required health insurance, thus opting for the safety net health care providers (Turnock, 2009). Additionally, there is an increase of bioterrorism, which gives health departments a bigger workload of disease supervision. Thus, the federal, state and local governments should devise and come up with emergency protocols for such situations.

The Goal of the Proposed Policy

The goal of the funding policy is to regulate the financing of the public health system and improve the health of the infrastructure.

Supporting Evidence for Implementing the Policy

Evidence of implementation is shown when the CDC, fund public health schools to prepare and properly train public health personnel to appropriately react to emergencies most especially those involved with b...