Course Topic: Advocacy for Public Health Policy Change Research the current American Public Health Association (APHA) 1. Provide a list of current APHA legislative priorities. 2. Briefly describe each...

ADVOCACY FOR PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY
American Public Health Association (APHA)
    Public health is an important and integral part of the healthcare field. The American Public Health Association (APHA) aims to enhance and protect the health of every individual in the community in order to achieve satisfactory health outcomes and well-being of people. The objectives that are achieved by public health facilities include prevention of diseases, monitoring and taking actions to improve the health and habitat consequences that people face after a natural disaster or an environmental hazard. Public health professionals play a vital role in spreading awareness in the community to control the spread and minimize disease by encouraging behaviours that confer to a well-informed thus protected community.
    The 2021 advocacy priorities of the America Public Health Association (APHA) are:
1. Increase and protect funding for vital public health agencies and programs and strengthen the nation’s public health infrastructure: This priority emphasises the importance of funding and investment in the public health field by the Congress and the Biden administration to ensure systematic operation of public health organizations programs. The United States federal public health system comprises of two main bodies that are responsible for supplying important resources to the state, local, te
itorial and tribal healthcare professionals and health departments of the nation; the CDC and the Health Resources and Services Administration.
    The public health organizations focus on providing nation-wide healthy living standards by carefully analyzing the areas of inequity and discrimination in the healthcare system and further addressing these issues in order to come up with effective solutions to tackle them and provide the required facilities to every citizen in the United States. Underfunding often leads to hindrance in the proper functioning of these organizations and the first priority in the APHA thus urges the government to work in a bipartisan manner and increase the investments for public health organizations received through the annual appropriations process.
    The cu
ent pandemic situation of COVID-19 has increased the urgency of these funds to provide safe and optimum healthcare facilities to patients and healthcare professionals as well as to set up isolation camps and treatment centres in order to prevent the further spread of the virus. The distribution of vaccines, as well as tasks like disease surveillance, epidemiology study, laboratory testing capacity,...