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The Future of Population Health (Volume 101)
Quarterly Article
Georges C. Benjamin
June 2024
September 2023
The Future of Population Health
Back to The Milbank Quarterly
Policy Points:
The public health infrastructure in the United States is in disrepair. In fact, it has never truly been adequate to meet the needs of the nation and our nation’s role in global affairs. In 1988 the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences published the results of a consensus study entitled “The Future of Public Health.”1 This report found the nation’s public health system to be in disarray and that the nation had lost sight of its public health needs. Since that time the nation has struggled to address this finding and to build a system that can adequately address the ever-growing needs of the population. Infrastructure is defined as “the resources (such as personnel, buildings, or equipment) required for an activity.”2 In fact, there is growing evidence that the basic infrastructure of the public health system in the nation has continued to erode to the point that its capacity and capabilities to adequately protect the nation are in doubt.1
