More than 55,000 public health jobs were eliminated due to budget cuts after the 2008 financial crisis, leaving the US more vulnerable to the coronavirus outbreak

Carlos Osorio/AP

A makeshift hospital is built inside a Detroit convention center during the coronavirus outbreak.

• After the 2008 financial crisis, significant budget cuts to public health initiatives were made at the federal and state level.
• However, when the economy rebounded, funding to public health did not.
• That left the US vulnerable when the coronavirus outbreak happened, experts told the Associated Press.
• These budget cuts resulted in more than 55,000 public health jobs being eliminated between 2008 and 2017, according to an analysis by one public health research and advocacy organization.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Funding to public health initiatives was slashed after the 2008 financial crisis, and never recovered - and the loss is being acutely felt during the coronavirus outbreak.

Experts described the scale of the rollback to the Associated Press (AP) on Sunday. The AP cited an analysis by Trust for America's Health, a public health research and advocacy organization, which found that more than 55,000 public health jobs were eliminated between 2008 and 2017. That's one-fifth of the total.

During outbreaks, public health workers are instrumental in identifying clusters of cases, and tracing their origin to stop diseases from spreading and growing to become epidemics and pandemics.

Trust for America CEO John Auerbach told the AP that the cuts "definitely made a difference."

Associated Press

An emergency room nurse dons her face protectors after taking a break in a driveway for ambulances and emergency medical services vehicles outside Brooklyn Hospital Center's emergency room, Sunday, April 5, 2020, in New York, during the coronavirus crisis. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Take the example of Detroit, a city which has grown to be one of the hot zones for the virus, with more than 4,500 cases and 167 deaths.

Since 2004, state spending on public health in Michigan dropped 16%, according to the AP.

Detroit's former public health director, Abdul El-Sayed, said that if there had been a larger public health system in place there, they would have been able to track down people who had been exposed earlier and isolate them.

This in turn could have prevented more infections, and eased the burden on the healthcare system.

Trust for America's Health also found that funding for the Centers for Disease Control fell 10% between 2010 and 2019. It said, too, that federal funding to help state and local governments prepare for public health emergencies fell from $1 billion around the time of 9/11 terror attacks to $650 million in 2019.

Of course federal and state governments can inject emergency funding to combat outbreaks such as the coronavirus.

But Brian Castrucci, president of health advocacy organization the de Beaumont Foundation, said these investments are often too late to be helpful.

He said it's like "we waited until the house was on fire before we started interviewing firefighters."

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