Contact Your Legislators to Protect the Prevention and Public Health Fund

The federally funded Prevention and Public Health Fund supports crucial prevention programs throughout the country, and many reflect the aims and mission of SBM. As federal law makers consider potential budget cuts, the Fund could be targeted. To urge your representatives to protect the Fund, use the SBM “Contact Your Legislator” feature. Find your legislators, send a letter developed by SBM’s Public Policy Leadership Group, and if you care to, insert a brief description of a Prevention and Public Health Fund program in your own state.

It’s important to contact legislators now, according to policy experts, especially legislators on the newly formed payroll tax cut conference committee. Conferees are poised to find deficit-neutral offsets for the $160 billion price of extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits through 2012; the price includes costs of maintaining current payment levels tor doctors treating Medicare patients. It’s possible that the conferees – from Arizona, California, Georgia, Idaho, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wyoming – could consider cutting the Prevention and Public Health Fund budget. Legislators from all states need to hear from their SBM constituents, but especially those from these key states.

Find SBM’s “Contact Your Legislator” tool at: http://www.sbm.org/about/public-policy/supporting-policy.