At the American Public Health Association (APHA), our goal is to make the United States the healthiest nation in the world. We hoped to accomplish this in the span of one generation. However, we have experienced an enormous setback in the form of a pandemic that has knocked us on our heels, as this report demonstrates.
This societal event dramatically impacted Americans, especially our most vulnerable communities, due to a variety of factors. The disease itself directly harmed people, but the pandemic also caused many to delay treatments for other pressing health issues, resulted in lost jobs and income and disrupted social connections. The COVID-era Disparities Survey presented in this report found, for example, that more than half of Hispanic adults reported that social isolation impacted their mental health, adding to the already-heavy toll on mental health in the U.S.
Additionally, many Americans put off routine wellness appointments and screenings for cancer and high blood pressure. The impact of this is often invisible until something catastrophic happens — much like the devastation brought by the pandemic following a years-long lack of investment in our public health systems that stymied our efforts to respond successfully as one million Americans lost their lives.
As we examine the latest data in the 2022 Annual Report, we hope to see a degree of recovery. But it’s clear that we as a nation have a health debt to pay — one that has accumulated over years. For too long, we have underinvested in our public health infrastructure and in the health of underserved communities of color where rates of chronic conditions and other health challenges are highest. We paid this debt during the pandemic, losing a million people, and we will continue to pay it over the coming years as we work to address the underlying racial and ethnic and other inequities that COVID-19 highlighted and exacerbated.
Moving forward, information like the data in the 2022 Annual Report will be critical to guide our public health decisions; the pandemic has underscored that detailed data broken down by demographics are crucial to how we respond to emerging and ongoing health challenges. What’s more, some positive notes from this period can help provide a roadmap. For example, more Americans are insured now than prior to the pandemic, and we have learned a lot about how to manage health and disease remotely and keep patients engaged via telehealth.
APHA is proud to partner with America’s Health Rankings to release this report. We see this as an opportunity to keep us all focused on improving health broadly, with data that can help policymakers, community leaders, public health officials and citizens target our attention and resources as we figure out just how big of a setback the pandemic has been, get on our feet and start to chart a path forward.