Expert Panel to Call for Overhaul of U.S. Public Health System

A bipartisan panel of well being specialists will name on Tuesday for an overhaul of the American public well being system that will enormously broaden the position of the federal authorities, giving Washington the authority to set minimal well being requirements and coordinate a patchwork of almost 3,000 state, native and tribal businesses.

The suggestions move from what the panel, the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a National Public Health System, described because the inadequacies and inequities of the United States’ response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than one million Americans.

But in a report to be launched on Tuesday, the panel stated it additionally wished to tackle the failures of the nation’s public well being businesses to defend Americans from different well being dangers, together with drug overdoses, diabetes and maternal mortality.

In recommending the creation of a brand new “national public health system,” the bipartisan panel, financed by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit analysis group targeted on well being care points, is dipping its toe in contentious political waters.

While different international locations have centralized public well being authorities, public well being within the United States is essentially managed on the state and native stage. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal public well being company, doesn’t have the authority to compel states to act — it can’t, for instance, examine outbreaks of infectious illness in a selected state until it has an invite from state officers to accomplish that.

State well being businesses and the C.D.C. have a protracted historical past of working collaboratively, however all through the pandemic, elected state officers — significantly these in pink states — have been reluctant to cede management. When the C.D.C. requested states to signal agreements to share vaccination information with the federal authorities, for instance, a number of states balked.

In its report, the panel cited “archaic approaches to aggregating data” as one purpose so many Americans have died. It known as on Congress to give the Department of Health and Human Services authority to set up and implement requirements for information assortment.

Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, a member of the panel, who served as C.D.C. director in President George W. Bush’s administration, stated the pandemic had “taught us that we have to have a coordinated, integrated public health network that functions — and the only way that we can bring that together is by having a national approach.”

The panel’s report comes as Congress is contemplating laws that takes a special strategy to shoring up the nation’s public well being infrastructure. The Senate well being committee has passed a bipartisan measure that will require the C.D.C. director to be confirmed by the Senate, and that calls for extra steps to enhance coordination among the many nation’s public well being businesses.

The fee’s suggestions are extra sweeping. The panel, led by Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration below President Barack Obama, calls for the creation of a brand new place — Under Secretary for Public Health — throughout the Department of Health and Human Services, to oversee the nationwide public well being system.

The below secretary would coordinate the work of greater than a dozen federal businesses that play a task in public well being, and would have the ability to set minimal well being requirements for the states.

“Our system of public health is a federalist system with states and localities having considerable autonomy — and appropriately so, as they adapt to the needs of their states and communities,” Dr. Hamburg stated in an interview. “However, the public health protections that individuals receive shouldn’t be wholly dependent on where you live. There should be a core set of expectations.”