Senators Call for Public Health Funding Surge to Respond to COVID-19 Pandemic, Prepare for Next Global Health Crisis & Address Stark Racial Health Disparities

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) led seven of his Senate colleagues in calling on Senate leadership to include $2 billion for the Prevention and Public Health Fund (PPHF) in the next COVID-19 response package. In today’s letter, the Senators urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to include the Public Health Funding Restoration Act, which would allocate $2 billion to the Prevention and Public Health Fund (PPHF) immediately and fund it in subsequent years, in the next COVID-19 package. Fully funding the PPHF would help the United States effectively respond to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, prepare for the next global health crisis, and address racial health disparities. PPHF was created by the Affordable Care Act (2010) and designed to support innovative public health and prevention programs, but its funding has been depleted to address other health priorities.

“As the COVID-19 pandemic has taken hold across the country and the globe, the United States’ inability to adequately and effectively respond to public health threats has been made clear,” the Senators wrote. “[O]ur country’s high rates of chronic disease, particularly within the minority community, has put the health of Americans uniquely in jeopardy. We must take steps to respond to the threat of COVID-19 and prepare for the next global pandemic by investing in public health and prevention measures that will address health inequities, chronic disease, and access to care.”

The Senators stressed the importance of this funding to help address acute racial health disparities. People of color and particularly Black Americans are more likely to have chronic diseases like obesity, high blood pressure, and heart disease, which has made them more likely to develop severe COVID-19 symptoms or to die from the virus. The Senators emphasized the urgent need to address these disparities, writing “[i]t is time investment in prevention and public health is taken seriously, and done equitably and sustainably.”

The letter was co-signed by U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Tina Smith (D-MN), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Bob Casey (D-PA).

The full text of the letter is available here.

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