Grantmakers In Health President and CEO Cara V. James was interviewed by Shoshana Ungerleider on the September 21, 2022 episode of the TED Health podcast about challenges faced by the U.S. public health system:
“I think public health has a messaging problem. And part of that speaks to most people couldn’t define what public health is. We have the 10 essential services that are provided by public health, multiple purposes that it serves. And that doesn’t fit very easily into something that is explainable in a 5 – 10 second soundbite. Moreover, public health is something that when it works, you don’t see it. And it’s when it’s not working that you see it. But I would say the last thing that is different—many people know that the U.S. spends more on health than any other developed country. But what they may not realize is that our focus on prevention, first acute care is skewed. So we spend more on treating people once they get sick than most countries spend and less on preventing them from getting sick in the first place, which is again, one of the functions of public health.“
> Click here to listen to the full interview.