ASTHO at 75: Celebrating the Past and Preparing for the Future

Fraser, Michael R.; Hardy, George

ASTHO, like many national public health associations, enjoyed rapid growth in the 1990s as federal grants and contracts created new opportunities for public health organizations to provide technical assistance and training on a variety of public health issues. The primary funding partners for these cooperative agreements were the agencies that worked most with state and territorial health agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). However, over time, programs with the Office of Minority Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the National Highway and Safety and Transportation Administration along with other agencies also built the capacity of the state and territorial health agencies and ASTHO. These investments allowed ASTHO to offer technical assistance and training as well as grow internal operational and organizational capacity for communications activities and policy work. Main topic areas of these projects included addressing communicable disease, chronic disease, maternal and child health, environmental health, health systems change, health equity, and public health informatics and surveillance capacity. Work to build the public health workforce and assess the capacity of local and state public health agencies was also started in the 1990s through agreements with the CDC, HRSA, and national philanthropic partners including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the de Beaumont Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.