Estimated expenditures for essential public health services--selected states, fiscal year 1995.

Essential public health services are activities that public health departments and other partners undertake to protect and ensure the health of the public. To characterize expenditures for those services and to distinguish within them expenditures for personal health-care services from community-based health services directed toward populations, the Public Health Service (PHS) and the Public Health Foundation surveyed senior health officials in eight states (Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas and Washington [combined 1995 population: 57.8 million]). This report summarizes the results of that survey, which indicate that spending on community-based health services is a small proportion of spending on essential services and an even smaller proportion of total health-care expenditures.