Defend Public Health Releases People’s Health Platform

After 15 Months of Fighting Attacks, Group Calls to Reimagine Public Health, Make Health an Issue in Midterms

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In a dramatic move to reframe the debate on public health and make health a key issue in this year’s midterm elections, Defend Public Health today released its People’s Health Platform. The group’s advocacy teams now working in 15 states – some red, some blue, some purple – will call on candidates of all parties to endorse the platform.

The 10-point platform, already endorsed by Health in Partnership, Public Citizen and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, includes both nuts-and-bolts items aimed at rebuilding the health and scientific infrastructure being systematically destroyed under the leadership of Trump administration Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – such as reestablishing science-based vaccine policy and restoring cuts to vital research and the infrastructure that tracks disease outbreaks – and visionary items that call for a fundamental reimagining of public health.

“Health isn’t just medicine and vaccines, important as those are,” said epidemiologist Elizabeth Jacobs, Ph.D., University of Arizona Professor Emerita and a member of DPH’s Coordinating Committee. “It’s also about all the things that either help you stay healthy or get in the way – like access to healthy food and exercise, safe housing and freedom from gun violence. On any given day in the U.S., 48 million people don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and lecturing them to ‘eat real food’ won’t help.”

“After over a year of policies that threaten the lives and health of us all, we can’t allow candidates to ignore these issues,” said DPH Coordinating Committee member Jon Shaffer, who has led the effort to assemble the group’s state organizing and advocacy teams. “Voters have a right to know who will stand up to protect their health and who won’t.”

The People’s Health Platform casts a broad net, calling for a revived fight against pollution and climate change as well as for rethinking the tax code to fund public health priorities. “The plain truth is that we can afford to do everything we propose if we have a tax system that makes the very rich pay their fair share,” said DPH Coordinating Committee member and epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves, Ph.D. “And a system that gives everyone access not just to healthcare but also the other things they need to maintain their health will save billions in costs by helping people stay healthy and out of the hospital. To really work, public health must embrace the totality of people’s lives, not just what happens at the doctor’s office.”

Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, commented, “The answer to a president and HHS secretary who have wrecked our flawed public health system is not to reconstitute it with warts and all, but to commit to a far more robust system rooted in science and justice. The People’s Health Platform is showing the way.”

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Defend Public Health is a volunteer-driven network of public health researchers, healthcare workers, advocates and allies fighting to protect the health of all from the Trump administration's cruel attacks on proven, science-based public health policies. We believe that everyone has the right to what they need for a healthy life, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender or gender identity.
DefendPublicHealth.org