Public Health Program Challenges Interview

Public Health Program Challenges in Municipalities

For public health challenges to be amicably solved, the entire community, political, legal, and government processes have to be synergized. This collaborative effort is quintessential in improving public health. A one man show would be detrimental because we have to appreciate that policies that help in running public health system require the input of the local community, the political class, and public health administrators (Gostin, 2001). The devolved nature of the public health law has seen limited scope the state and the federal government has had on the operation of public health. To that effect, local entities like boards of health, city councils, and county council have had a lot of say on how public health issues are managed within their areas of jurisdiction. Most of the available literature on public health law largely captures matters pertaining to firearms, housing, or smoking regulations. There are more than 18,000 local authorities within the United States which are mandated by law to address public health concerns (Gostin, 2001). Due to the uniqueness of each of these local authorities, they normally legislate laws that address pressing health concerns within their respective localities. Public health concerns like the handling of food are common across many local governments but are handled differently depending on whether it is an urban or a rural setting, population size, local governance, to mention but a few factors. Other public health issues like physical activity, outside burning, and smoking are uniquely addressed at the local level different from federal or state approaches (Gostin, 2001). Local authorities exercise powers bestowed upon them by the state in addressing public health issues. Forty-eight states have constitutional or statutory home-rule law that allows them to address specific local public health concerns (Diller, 2007). In cases where there is a gap in federal or state public health laws, local ordinances can be instituted to address critical public health issues (Barron, 2003). This has been witnessed in ordinances that regulate use of tobacco and control of firearms. In other jurisdictions, state laws preempt local ordinances. Local government must therefore, in such instances, carry out state health regulations while adapting them to address local needs and priorities (Gostin, 2001).

Findings and implications for Local Public Health Policy

This research seeks to establish the functions of municipal government on public health programs and the impact of public health programs on local services. It also endeavors to assess the major themes, legal approaches, and effectiveness of local law in improving public health with a view to facilitating an understanding of relationship between local and state public health laws. In order to know the functions of the municipal government on public health programs I focused on understanding the scope and the breadth of local ordinances. I researched the ordinances of approximately 50 municipalities of various sizes and locations using online research engines like LexisNexus and city government websites (McCarthy, Nelson, Hodge. & Gebbie, 2009). Based on my review of these municipalities’ laws, I did an extrapolation of common public health topics and themes. From the initial review, I selected 37 geographically dispersed locally dispersed jurisdictions with populations ranging from 51,000 to 9.5 million in order to study public health themes in their ordinances (McCarthy & Nelson, et al., 2009).

In order to know the challenges in the realm of the public health, questionnaires were dispatched to officials in this 37 local authorities. Duly filled questionnaires were then taken back for purposes of data analysis.

Results

After reviewing the 37 selected municipalities 22 public health topics that recurred in a varying degree in many municipal codes were identified. Some of the public health topics included air quality, alcoholic beverages, animals, child care centers, communicable diseases, food, garbage collection and disposal, housing and building codes, noise, and mass gatherings, to mention but a few. The most predominant public health topics regulated by local authorities included garbage collection and disposal, animals, and sewer systems.

Diversity of the scope of municipalities’ ordinances is illustrated through their communicable disease control provisions. Twenty four per cent of municipalities addressed this issue in their codes. Billings, Montana feature quarantine, reporting, and cost which pertain to communicable disease. Wichita and Kansas, within Dallas, Texas, has 26 ordinances touching on communicable and infectious diseases which points out that state laws mainly govern communicable and infectious diseases (McCarthy & Nelson, et al., 2009).

Local public health laws that govern food seemed to be more complex. Some municipalities had laws that regulated handling and distribution of food, mobile food units, restaurant licensing, inspection , and sanitation, and meat and milk. A municipality, like Providence, in Rhode Island, had ordinances…