Health infrastructure
About
Health infrastructure includes all systems, organizations, interventions and resources intended for health promotion and illness prevention. Health care systems promote health and well-being for community members through care services such as primary care, hospital care and long-term or home care. Public health systems monitor, detect and intervene when disease or risks impact community health to limit harm and promote healthy lifestyles, environments and policies. Health infrastructure supports all health services — from vaccinations and chronic disease prevention programs to emergency preparedness efforts.
Relationship to health and equity
Effective health infrastructure improves community conditions, in turn preventing disease and injuries and promoting health and equity. For example, public health professionals conduct activities ranging from monitoring food safety and water quality, to advocating for laws in support of nutrition labeling and affordable housing. Public health professionals may partner with land use planners to promote community developments that make exercise easier or ensure that communities don’t experience disproportionate harm from polluting industries. When people are sick or injured, health professionals provide clinical care that treats disease and injury.
Relationship to systems and structures
People in power have changed laws, policies and institutional practices around health infrastructure. This has both limited and expanded access to health care and the ability of public health to advocate on behalf of those who have been disproportionately harmed. For example, political attacks on the emergency and regulatory authority of public health and underfunding of public health infrastructure have limited the influence of public health on everyone’s ability to live long and well. On the other hand, the Affordable Care Act expanded access to health care.
Laws, policies, budgets and institutional practices have improved health care systems to shift resources to those who need them most. For example, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 created Neighborhood Health Centers, the precursors to Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), to provide high-quality health services to low-income residents. Results include improved health outcomes, reduced health disparities, cost savings and improved patient satisfaction. Activists, including the Black Panther party, were instrumental in pushing for free health clinics that eventually became FQHCs.
Health infrastructure is currently a focus of contested power regarding public health interventions including vaccines, water fluoridation and public health authority to protect population health for all. Governmental public health and regulation have an important role to play in protecting our health. We are all harmed when protection disappears or decreases, especially those who have been unprotected in the past.
Additional reading
- Basset, M.T. (2016). Beyond berets: The Black Panthers as health activists. American Journal of Public Health, 106(10), 1741-1743. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303412