From WisPolitics.com/WisBusiness.com …
— Dem lawmakers are circulating legislation that would provide grants to match counties’ investments in the health workforce.
Reps. Mike Bare of Verona, Jodi Emerson of Eau Claire and Alex Joers of Waunakee, as well as Sen. Dianne Hesselbein of Middleton, recently sent a co-sponsorship memo to other lawmakers on the bill.
Under the legislation, the state Department of Health Services would be required to award grants to counties matching any investments they made in the previous fiscal year across various elements of the health workforce. That can include recruitment and retention efforts, mental health, trauma care and prevention, or wellness of workers across public health, child care, long-term care and health care more broadly.
Grants would be limited to $1.11 multiplied by the recipient county’s population, according to the Legislative Reference Bureau.
Authors say workers providing care and keeping communities safe “must themselves be well” in order to deliver quality health care.
“Hundreds of billions of dollars were spent to help our communities as they endured and recovered from the pandemic, but there were almost no public investments in our health care and public health heroes,” they wrote.
The memo notes a Dane County Board subcommittee investigation from 2022 led to $621,000 being spent on a “groundbreaking” trauma recovery program to support health workers. With a population of about 560,000 based on the 2020 census, the maximum grant that would be provided under the proposed program would be just over $620,000.
Authors say grants like this would “help counties from across the state create similar programs to support their public health workforce that are critical to the success of all communities — rural, urban and suburban alike.”
The co-sponsorship deadline is 5 p.m. Nov. 28.
See the bill text.
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