Faculty and staff within Cornell’s Department of Public & Ecosystem Health have been funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Public Health Infrastructure and Workforce to help strengthen the public health system in the United States. As part of the National Partners Cooperative Agreement, the recipient organizations will receive a part of the $176 million in funding for the first year of a five-year-cycle.

“This partnership is critical because it amplifies our collective impacts on pressing public health challenges in New York State and around the nation,” says Dr. Alexander Travis, director of Cornell Public Health and founding chair of the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health.

As a recipient, Cornell Public Health is recognized as an “organization that has the capability, expertise, resources, and national reach to support public health infrastructure and workforce needs,” according to the CDC’s grant statement.

“With this initiative, CDC is investing in our collective futures,” says Dr. Gen Meredith, associate director of Cornell Public Health and PI on the grant. “We, along with this great network of partners, will develop and support access to and utilization of evidence-based interventions to expand workforce capacity and effectiveness in delivering essential public health services, and to ensure organizational capability to address equity-based public health priorities.”  

Meredith notes that this is an important development given the decades of stagnant funding that has led to overstrained public health infrastructure and capabilities. “The shared investment in public health systems strengthening during the COVID-19 emergency response was encouraging, and long overdue,” she says. “It is inspiring to see the CDC is committed to extending those investments so that we are not only prepared for what the future might bring, but are also able to amplify the core tenets of public health in ways that acknowledge and address health disparities.”

Cornell’s Heath Impacts Core has been funded under two complementary mechanisms. Over the next five years, Meredith and her team, along with national collaborators, will build from previous work  to expand the capacity of public health workers in rural communities, helping close stark health equity gaps. Leveraging the Public Health Essentials certificate program and their capacity building approach, the Cornell team will develop targeted support for rural public health teams to create measurable, equity-focused impacts. 

Another eight supplemental project proposals developed by an expanded Cornell team were approved by CDC, with three being funded immediately. These supplemental projects — entitled, “Public Health Strategic Skills, Rural Public Health, Collaborative Public Health Leadership;” “Engaging American Indian/Alaska Native Teens and Adults in Swim Instructor Training;” and “Climate and Health” — aim to reinforce public health system performance to improve health outcomes and reduce health inequities.