Evaluating the Impact of Reallocating Georgia's Funding for Local Public Health Infrastructure

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Overview

The General Grant-in-Aid (GGIA) evaluation project evaluates funding for future public health services for millions of Georgia residents. Beginning in 2012, state-level funding for public health infrastructure at the county level (known as GGIA) is recalculated for the first time since 1970 based on 2010 population and county poverty rates. This results in significant changes in the amount of resources provided by the state to counties for public health. The project involves performing a longitudinal regression analysis, supplemented by structured interviews with key local health officers, to examine whether the GGIA funding across time is systematically related to changes in the local public health infrastructure, the scope and scale of key public health services and their consequent impact on health behaviors and outcomes in the state. The project is a partnership between the University of Georgia’s College of Public Health and the Georgia Department of Public Health, enabling full access to all 18 district health offices and 159 county health officers in the state. The project informs the consideration of future formula changes through reports and briefings for state health department officials, state legislators, and public health leadership at the local, county, and district levels.

Publication

• Linking Costs to Health Outcomes for Allocating Scarce Public Health Resources (related, Frontiers in PHSSR and e-Gems, December 2014)

Presentation

• Evaluating the Impact of Reallocating Georgia's Funding for Local Public Health Infrastructure (PHSSR Keeneland Conference, April 2014)

Tools

• Evaluating the Impact of Reallocating Georgia's Funding for Local Public Health Infrastructure (Paper, September 2014)
• Evaluating the Impact of Reallocating Georgia's Funding for Local Public Health Infrastructure (Brief Report, September 2014)

Research Areas

• Financing and Economics
• Financing Mechanisms

Contact

Phaedra Corso, Ph.D. and Samir P. Desai, MHA
University of Georgia