A report card released about a year ago by the nonpartisan Health Policy Institute of Ohio has painted a grim picture of Ohio in terms of preparedness to tackle the outbreak of any infectious disease. In fact, Ohio has been put in the bottom tier of states.

Ohio could manage points for only three of the 10 indicators that were assessed in the report, titled “Outbreaks: Protecting Americans From Infectious Diseases”. The other states that shared the bottom rank with Ohio were Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah.

Ohio has been faring poor for the past three years since the authors started preparing the report.
The states that scored the highest points—got credits in eight of the 10 indicators—were Delaware, Kentucky, Maine, New York and Virginia, mentioned the report, which was funded by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“There’s still some significant policy work that needs to be done in Ohio”, said Jeffrey Levi, principal author of the report.

The report showed that among other fronts, Ohio’s show remained poor when it came to the funding of public health—overall spending in the sector decreased to $581.8 million this fiscal year from $592.7 million the previous year—by reducing spending at the state level between fiscal years 2014 and 2015.

However, Ohio’s medical director of the state Department of Health, Dr. Mary DiOrio, doesn’t agree with these findings: “The state does a very good job of preventing and responding to infectious-disease outbreaks… The new snapshot of the state’s outbreak readiness and response efforts doesn’t give a full picture of what’s going on in the state”.