LITTLE ROCK – The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health will conduct the first national, longitudinal study of the nation’s state and local public health care systems.

With a $276,310 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, researchers will take an in-depth look at the structure and function of these systems to advise  policymakers deciding how best to spend their public health dollars. The study also will provide an inventory of public health system capacity, which has become a topic of increasing concern in view of the nation’s recent hurricane response efforts.  

“The availability of essential public health services varies widely across states and communities,” said Glen Mays, Ph.D., principal investigator for the study. “Despite rising concerns about public health threats nationally, ranging from bioterrorism to obesity, there’s very little information for making decisions about how best to organize, finance and deliver these services.”

A public health system is defined as the collection of government agencies and private organizations that provide public health services for a given community, state, or region.  Historically most of the nation’s health care research has focused on medical care systems as opposed to public health systems. That is partly because most of the nation’s health care dollars go to fund medical care rather than public health activities such as programs to encourage exercise, reduce tobacco use or prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

“We’ve been studying various aspects of the medical care system for a long time now in order to find ways to contain costs and improve outcomes,” Mays said. “We believe there are additional opportunities for improving health and saving money by studying how best to organize and deliver public health services.”   

Mays is associate professor, vice chairman and director of research for the Department of Health Policy and Management at the UAMS College of Public Health. He will work with Douglas F. Scutchfield, M.D., the co-principal investigator at the University of Kentucky. Scutchfield is the Peter P. Bosomworth Professor of Health Services Research and Policy at UK. Mays and Scutchfield are founding members of a national research group devoted to the study of public health systems.

The two-year project will survey state and local public health organizations across the country in order to achieve three objectives:

• Compare how public health systems are organized and identify strengths and weaknesses of these systems. This will allow researchers and policymakers to more easily track how public health systems change over time and identify the causes and consequences of such change.
• Identify the political, economic, institutional and socio-cultural forces that shape the structure and operation of public health systems at state and local levels. Such an analysis will reveal strategies for overcoming major obstacles to system improvement.
• Assess how the system’s structure influences the availability of essential public health services in states and communities. This will help state and local policy-makers identify promising models for restructuring their public health systems to improve performance.

UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with five colleges, a graduate school, a medical center, five centers of excellence and a statewide network of regional centers. UAMS has about 2,320 students and 690 residents and is the state’s largest public employer with almost 9,000 employees. UAMS and its affiliates have an economic impact in Arkansas of $4.3 billion a year.

UAMS centers of excellence are the Arkansas Cancer Research Center, Harvey and Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging, Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy and Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute.