While many of us do not like or appreciate the financial intricacies of public health planning and implementation, none of us can ignore the need to prepare a budget and monitor its results in our own projects. Budgeting is about making assumptions, quantifying them, then assessing how well the assumptions stand up to reality.
Using the public health crisis and intervention you located and described in Unit 1, examine the financial impacts of this crisis. Begin with examining the costs and then discuss the budgeting processes and tools you would use in your budgeting situation.
Costs
In terms of start-up capital costs, ongoing expenses, and other categories, what are the true costs of intervention?
What might it cost society in any economic terms you can identify?
Will it continue to cost something in the future?
If you have not been able to find actual cost data, what do you think the costs might be, and why?
The Budgeting Process
From the three peer-reviewed sources you located in the study activity, analyze the budgeting processes as they are described in the sources.
What are the major components of a budget?
What are the steps in the process?
What aspects of planning, control, and audit are considered in the processes?
Compare what you learned from these sources to what you learned from the text in Chapter 3 of Scutchfield and Keck’s Principles of Public Health Practice.
Complete your post by identifying which tools you found to be most useful in these processes, and discuss how you might apply them in a public health budgeting situation.
