COVID-19 exposes society’s failures to support public health

Today’s guest post is by APHA member Barry S. Levy, MD, MPH, a physician, epidemiologist, adjunct professor of public health at Tufts University School of Medicine and a past APHA president. He dedicates this post to the memory of Bailus Walker Jr., PhD, MPH, also a past APHA president, who was a longtime advocate for environmental justice and public health.

The COVID-19 pandemic has starkly exposed what public health workers have known for years: We, as a society, have failed to assure the conditions in which people can be healthy.

As a society, we have failed to:

• Value public health: Not providing necessary resources for federal, state and local public health agencies; not adequately supporting prevention of disease, injury and premature death; and unnecessarily politicizing public health issues — the consequences of these failures are now evident.
• Address racism and other forms of social injustice: Condoning structural racism as well as inadequate health care for socially vulnerable populations and other health inequities — reflected, in part, by the significantly higher COVID-19 mortality rates among people of color.
• Heed warnings to adequately prepare for health crises: Doing too little, too late for emerging threats to the health of the public: the opioid crisis, the climate crisis and now the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Support science and the roles of science-based public health agencies in policymaking: Not valuing and not adequately funding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other science-based institutions, and often letting public health policies be determined on the basis of inaccurate information and political ideology — as is now frequently occurring.
• Make health care available and accessible to all: Creating barriers to diagnostic, treatment and preventive services for low-wage workers, immigrants and people who are impoverished, homeless, incarcerated or otherwise marginalized.
• Address mental health needs: Not adequately addressing individual and community mental health needs or adequately building individual and community resilience — the consequences of which are now, and will continue to be, overwhelming as a result of the pandemic.
• Protect workers: Weakening or not implementing occupational health and safety regulations and not providing adequate compensation, sick leave or other benefits for workers — as is now evident by the lack of personal protective equipment, unsafe working conditions and limited benefits for many health care, grocery, transportation, delivery and other essential workers.
• Support global health: Abandoning our country’s leadership role, limiting cooperation with other countries, not adequately supporting the World Health Organization and failing to provide desperately needed public health assistance to low- and middle-income countries —with evolving catastrophic consequences during the pandemic.
• Recognize the potential transmission of animal infections to humans: Not adequately understanding or preventing the transmission to humans of novel infections in animals, the likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Put the public in public health: Not adequately engaging the public in public health, resulting in many adverse consequences, such as a failure to recognize that public health is essential for a healthy economy and a healthy society — a critically important understanding as our nation addresses the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Chinese word for “crisis” is composed of two characters, one of which signifies “danger” and the other “opportunity.” The COVID-19 pandemic presents many dangers. But it also provides opportunities to address the ways in which we, as a society, have failed to protect the health of the public.

As we address the COVID-19 pandemic, let us find and create opportunities to improve public health and to assure the conditions in which people can be healthy.

To stay up to date on public health and COVID-19, visit and bookmark APHA’s COVID-19 and Get Ready pages and our coronavirus post series here on Public Health Newswire.