Local public health expenditures cover a variety of services regarded as essential to the health and safety of any community. They include the monitoring of food safety in restaurants and supermarkets, the quality of our drinking water, compliance by waste disposal systems as well as of disease prevention efforts. Public health has a long tradition of offering key medical services to the population at large, such as vaccinations, HIV testing and case management, smoking cessation, and environmental health outreach. Public health agencies are also keepers of medical information, such as birth and death certificates, as well as epidemiological trends in the community.
To assess relative adequacy, two measures of local funding support for public health are used. The first is common and straightforward: per capita, or average local government expenditures. The second involves comparing total public spending to total personal income. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis, total personal income (TPI) is “the sum of net earnings by place of residence, property income, and personal current transfer receipts.” In short, TPI is the total income received from all sources of income in a particular area, before any taxes are paid. Using the local government expenditures per $1,000 TPI ratio allows us to understand how big a share of a typical resident’s budget public health services takes up. This view allows a comparison of residents’ apparent willingness to pay for public health with those of all residents in the state.
This indicator measures local government expenditures on public health in Walla Walla County, on a per capita basis and as expenditures per $1,000 Total Personal Income (TPI).
It does not include local government expenditures on substance abuse and mental health. Given the structure of local government, it primarily represents spending by county government. Similar measures for all local jurisdictions in Washington State are offered as benchmarks. The benchmarks consist of expenditures by all local government funding in Washington, but not by the state government. Additional information, including the total public health expenditures for each of the offered jurisdictions, can be found in the “Download Data” section.