CHARLESTON, W.Va. — As the West Virginia Legislature continues to work on next year’s budget during the final days of the 2021 regular session, local health departments in West Virginia want to make sure they are taken care of in it.
A. Jay Root with the West Virginia Local Health Department Association told WMOV-Radio in Ravenswood that local health leaders from the 48 health departments want to make sure legislative leaders are able to allocate funding in order to maintain the level of care health departments have set during the past two years during the pandemic.
A news release stated that local health departments currently receive $14,160,490 in annual state funding. An additional $7,460,291 is needed to sustain the existing infrastructure to ensure the departments’ promotion, prevention and protection activities for public health in West Virginia, Root said.
“Once we get into the middle of 2023, a lot of those grants will run out. We are taking a proactive stance into looking at what we can do to maintain that level of what we have built up,” Root said.
Root added that prior to the pandemic, many health departments were already on shoe-string budgets or skeleton crews.
A study by the association has found that the four dozen local health departments, including some covering more than one county, touched the lives of virtually every West Virginian with a total of 2,375,673 encounters in 2021.
Root said association leaders plan to meet with state lawmakers and potentially Gov. Jim Justice’s office in the next two weeks.
“This is a time to move forward, not backward, in protecting the health of all West Virginians,” Root said.
The state Senate has passed its own version of the budget bill and will forward it to the House to iron out the differences in the remainder of the session.