Table_7_Actual Causes of Death in Relation to Media, Policy, and Funding Attention: Examining Public Health Priorities.DOCX

Despite numerous public health advancements over the last century, we continue to under-invest in prevention and public health efforts. As a result, one of the most challenging aspects of public health is prioritizing the use of limited resources. Building on the foundation of previous researchers, the goal of this exploratory study was to provide current estimates for the actual causes of death, media attention, policy focus, and research funding in the United States. In addition, we sought to calculate and compare media attention, policy attention, and research funding trends to better assess the nation's prioritization of health issues. Using a systematic approach, we searched available databases, including Media Cloud, Nexis Uni, Congress.gov, and the Department of Health and Human Services Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System from January 1, 2010-December 31, 2019 and compared how the actual causes of death in the United States align with health-related media attention, policy attention, and federal spending. Overall, our findings suggest that our priorities are not well-aligned with the actual causes of death. Certain actual causes appear to be consistently misaligned across media, legislative, and financial sectors (e.g., tobacco). This work highlights the importance of multiple strategies—media coverage, national legislation, and government spending—as indicators of public health attention and priorities. These results may inform discussions about how to best allocate U.S. public health resources to better align with the actual causes of death.

尽管在过去一个世纪中公共卫生取得了众多进步，但我们仍然未能充分投资于预防和公共卫生工作。因此，公共卫生领域最具挑战性的问题之一便是如何优先分配有限的资源。在继承先前研究者成果的基础上，本探索性研究的目的是提供美国当前关于死亡原因、媒体报道、政策关注和研究资金投入的实际估计。此外，我们还旨在计算并比较媒体报道、政策关注和研究资金投入的趋势，以便更好地评估国家在健康问题上的优先级。采用系统化的方法，我们检索了包括 Media Cloud、Nexis Uni、Congress.gov 以及美国卫生与公众服务部追踪政府补助金问责系统在内的数据库，时间范围为2010年1月1日至2019年12月31日，并比较了美国实际死亡原因与与健康相关的媒体报道、政策关注和联邦支出之间的关系。总体而言，我们的研究发现，我们的优先级并未与实际死亡原因相吻合。某些实际死亡原因似乎在媒体、立法和金融领域存在持续的错位（例如，烟草）。这项工作突出了媒体覆盖、国家立法和政府支出作为公共卫生关注和优先级指示器的重要性。这些结果可能为关于如何最优分配美国公共卫生资源以更好地与实际死亡原因相吻合的讨论提供信息。