Trust for America’s Health (TFAH)

Child Health

Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities
Summary: Over the years, the public health and medical communities have learned a great deal about the birth defects and developmental disabilities that affect hundreds of thousands of children each year. Prevention, cures, and treatments have allowed many of those who might have been seriously impaired to live rich, full lives.  Continued medical advances and an enhanced understanding of how disorders impact those who live with them have led to significant progress with respect to health, education, social integration, and overall quality of life.

Closing the Vaccination Gap
Summary: Twenty percent of preschool children, aged 19-35 months, do not receive all routine vaccinations to protect against a range of common childhood diseases.  While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced a significant increase in vaccination rates from 2002 to 2003, each year an estimated 2.1 million preschool children are still not fully immunized. Leaving a single child unprotected is one too many.

Child Welfare

2003 Update: Birth Defects Tracking and Prevention One Year Later: One Step Forward. Two Steps Back?
Summary: As part of its ongoing efforts to strengthen the fundamentals of our public health defenses, Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) has identified nationwide tracking of chronic conditions and diseases as a priority.  Monitoring and tracking initiatives, like registries created to monitor birth defects, form the backbone of a vital, functional and responsive public health network.

Birth Defects Tracking and Prevention: Too Many States Are Not Making the Grade
Summary: Trust for America's Health (TFAH) is a national non-profit organization whose mission is to protect the health and safety of all communities, especially those most at risk of environmental and other public health threats.  Our goal is to strengthen the nation’s public health system through science-based research, community partnerships, education, and advocacy.

Environmental Health

Improving Cancer Tracking Today Saves Lives Tomorrow: Do States Make the Grade?
Summary: More than 30 years after the launch of the national War on Cancer, the disease remains the top health concern facing Americans today. The American Cancer Society (ACS) estimates that more than half a million people will die of cancer in the U.S. this year.2 Cancer costs our nation more than $180 billion in health care spending and lost productivity from illness and death.3 Millions of Americans are living with the disease every day.

Nationwide Health Tracking: Investigating Life-Saving Discoveries
Summary: Chronic diseases, such as cancer, asthma, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and diabetes are responsible for seven out of ten deaths in America.  These diseases strike more than a third of the U.S. population, over 100 million men, women and children.  The costs of caring for people with chronic diseases account for more than 75 percent of the nation’s $1 trillion health care budget.  By 2020, chronic disease is expected to afflict 134 million Americans

Our Lack of Response to the Growing Asthma Epidemic and the Need for Nationwide Tracking
Summary: Asthma, a disease which can make breathing so difficult that even simple tasks are impossible and can even lead to death, is America’s fastest growing chronic affliction.  So far, more than 17 million Americans—nearly five million of whom are children—have been hit by this epidemic. And we don’t know why.  But we do know asthma attacks are triggered by local environmental factors, from indoor irritants such as mold and tobacco smoke to outdoor air pollutants such as ozone.

Food Safety

Animal-Borne Epidemics Out of Control
Summary: For centuries, humans have been afflicted with diseases that originate in animals.  Many of the agents responsible for epidemics throughout human history have their origins in animals:  tuberculosis, influenza, bubonic plague, food-borne illness, and AIDS.  Episodes of animal-borne diseases, also referred to as zoonotic diseases or zoonoses, are increasing around the globe. Exotic sounding ailments, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), monkeypox, West Nile virus (WNV), mad cow disease, Lyme disease, and chronic wasting disease (CWD), a fatal disease affecting deer and elk, have been capturing global head- lines.  Some scientists expect the rise in zoonotic disease episodes to continue.

Fixing Food Safety
Summary: Approximately 76 million Americans -- one in four -- are sickened by foodborne disease each year.  Of these, an estimated 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die.1 Medical costs and lost productivity due to foodborne illnesses are estimated to cost $44 billion annually.2, 3 Major outbreaks can also contribute to significant economic losses in the agriculture and food retail industries.  

Pandemic Influenza

A Killer Flu?
Summary: The seasonal flu kills approximately 36,000 to 40,000 people and hospitalizes more than 200,000 in the United States each year.1 Annually, influenza costs the national economy over $10 billion in lost productivity and direct medical expenses.2 Many view the flu as a relatively predictable and manageable health threat.  

Analysis Finds Worrisome Gaps in U.S. Planning for an Avian Flu Outbreak
Summary: Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) today released a review of U.S. pandemic flu plans that found many planning topics remain under-addressed and additional actions could be taken to improve preparations and reduce the risks posed by an outbreak.  Some key areas of concern include vaccine and treatment shortfalls, gaps in containment strategies, limited plans for how to keep the public informed, and inadequate review of state plans for quality and feasibility.

Facing The Flu: From the Bird Flu to a Possible Pandemic, Why Isn't America Ready?
Summary: Between 10 and 20 percent of the U.S. population is estimated to contract influenza annually.  Each year, it is responsible for approximately 36,000 deaths in this country.2 However, the nation lacks a unified and effective flu management strategy. 

Media Attitudes and Coverage of Pandemic Flu
Summary: With funding provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts, and on behalf of the Trust for America’s Health and Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc., conducted 20 one-on-one telephone interviews from March 3 to 29, 2006, among television, radio, and newspaper journalists who cover public health issues.   

Pandemic Flu and the Potential for U.S. Economic Recession
Summary: A pandemic influenza outbreak is inevitable, according to scientific experts. Flu pandemics occur 3 to 4 times each century, when a new influenza virus emerges against which people have little-to-no immunity. The major questions are when the next pandemic will occur, what strain of the virus will be involved, and how severe the outbreak will be.

Pandemic Influenza: The State of the Science
Summary: Most Americans are familiar with seasonal flu, a respiratory illness that strikes annually.  Seasonal flu kills approximately 36,000 people in the United States every year and hospitalizes more than 200,000, but experts generally consider it a predictable public health problem, since many people have some form of immunity to it, and a yearly vaccine is available.

Pandemic Influenza: Warning, Children At-Risk
Summary: Scientists around the globe have been warning about the risk of a potential pandemic influenza outbreak.  Pandemic flu is caused by a new, severe strain of the flu virus capable of producing severe disease and spreading rapidly person-to-person worldwide.  Unlike the seasonal flu, a pandemic flu virus poses a novel threat since humans would have no previously developed immunity against this new virus strain, putting most people at high risk for infection.  This could result in a large percentage of the world’s population being infected by a rapidly spreading virus in a very short period of time.

Public Health

5 Easy Steps to Making Health Advocacy Hometown News
Summary: Media coverage is often one of the most effective ways to raise public awareness and understanding of a health problem or issue that is of concern to you.  

A Vision for a Healthier America
Summary: America should strive to be the healthiest nation in the world.  Every American should have the opportunity to be as healthy as he or she can be.  Every community should be safe from threats to its health.  And all individuals and families should have a high level of services that protect, promote, and preserve their health, regardless of who they are or where they live.

Memo: Making Healthy Americans a Priority in 2008
Summary: A new survey commissioned by the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) finds that Americans place a high value on preventing disease and promoting healthy lifestyles. At a time when the rising costs of health care has become the central economic issue, Americans are eager to invest in preventing diseases and promoting healthy lifestyles as a way of helping to reduce long term health care costs in the country.

Poll Report on America's Top Health Concerns
Summary: Americans rate the flu epidemic, cancer, and obesity as top health concerns.  Nearly three in four Americans say the government needs to spend more on health priorities and emerging threats. Spending on public health viewed as vital to improving homeland security.

SARS and Its Implications for U.S. Public Health Policy – "We've Been Lucky"
Summary: Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a new and serious public health threat.  Much like the anthrax attacks of 2001 or the current national asthma epidemic, the recent SARS outbreak provides a “real time” example of the complex challenges facing the U.S. public health system -- the network of local, state and federal health agencies that collectively are responsible for disease prevention, response and control in America.

Ten Top Priorities for Prevention
Summary: America spends more than $2 trillion annually on health care, more than any other nation.  Yet tens of millions of Americans still suffer every day from preventable illness and chronic disease.  Additionally, the skyrocketing costs of health insurance threaten to bankrupt American businesses and weaken our economy.  Some companies have already begun sending jobs to other countries where health care costs are lower, and this trend is likely to continue unless the health of the nation improves and costs are contained.

TFAH Budget Analysis
Summary:

West Nile Virus: 2004 Expected to Be Most Severe Year Yet
Summary: In five years since its first U.S. discovery in New York City in 1999, West Nile virus (WNV) has become a permanent part of the U.S. health landscape.  The 2003 WNV season was the most severe ever.  Nearly 10,000 people contracted the disease, which emerges each spring and peaks in the summer and early fall.  2003 WNV activity was concentrated in the Midwestern, Plains, and Rocky Mountain states, though human cases were diagnosed in 45 states and the District of Columbia.

You, Too, Can Be An Effective Health Advocate
Summary: An advocate is one who defends a cause or petitions on another’s behalf.  The word advocate comes from the Latin word for “voice.” So use yours! As a citizen of the United States of America, the Constitution guarantees you the right to free speech and the right to petition your government on issues that are of concern to you.  Effective advocacy is a powerful prescription for improving your health, the health of your family and your community.