(Radio Iowa) – Iowa has fallen to the bottom rating on a national report gauging the preparedness of all 50 states for public health emergencies, from disease outbreaks to natural disasters. Dara Lieberman (DAR-ah LEE-bur-mun), director of government relations at the non-profit Trust for America’s Health, says Iowa’s ranking dropped from 2025.
“We use ten indicators of state preparedness to assess how the nation is doing on public health preparedness and Iowa was one of 13 states in our lower performance tier this year,” Lieberman says. “It moved down from last year when it was in the middle performance tier, unfortunately.” Those ten indicators include factors like water safety and hospital accreditation, and Iowa slipped in several of key areas.
“A major one is the state was only one of 12 that reduced its state public health funding last year, so that was a big driver,” Lieberman says. “We also saw the state a little below average on things like patient safety and hospitals. None of the acute care hospitals in Iowa achieved an ‘A’ safety rating.” On the plus side, the report shows Iowa is doing very well in a couple of crucial categories.
“Iowa does have accreditation for public health, which means that its public health department is meeting national standards,” Lieberman says. “It is doing very well on community water safety, and then we have a measure that looks at the underlying health and how the state is doing at health equity where the state of Iowa is doing a little bit better compared to the national average.”
Should the report be a concern to Iowans? Yes, she says, and the state’s residents should take Iowa’s bottom-level ranking as a call to action. “Let the state legislators know as well as federal legislators how important public health funding is, day in and day out,” Lieberman says. “Most of CDC funding goes out to states, so when those funds are cut, it means fewer services to protect Iowans. The state public health budget is equally important for making sure that you’re ready for natural disasters, outbreaks, or come what may.”
See the full report at: https://www.tfah.org/
