The Costs of Getting Sick
A CDC Foundation Podcast
Contagious Conversations is a podcast hosted and brought to you by the CDC Foundation. The CDC Foundation is an independent nonprofit and the sole entity created by Congress to mobilize philanthropic and private-sector resources to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s critical health protection work. Their podcast features compelling interviews with experts who are tackling some of the world’s toughest health challenges.
This episode is hosted by Dr. Judy Monroe, President and CEO of the CDC Foundation and host of today’s conversation. Every episode we hear from inspiring leaders and innovators who make the world healthier and safer for all of us. Contagious Conversations is brought to you by the CDC Foundation, an independent nonprofit that builds partnerships to help the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention save and improve more lives.
Getting sick can be expensive. As we all know, when an illness prevents us from doing our jobs, there’s work that doesn’t get done. We can miss paychecks, our kids may be impacted, the effects go on and on. This is especially true of chronic and mental health diseases. A full 90% of the nation’s spending on healthcare each year is for noninfectious conditions like heart disease, cancer and diabetes, according to CDC.
And as far as infectious disease goes, we only have to rewind a couple of years to see the impact the COVID pandemic had on, well, everything and everyone from restaurant workers, educators and parents to healthcare, shipping and financial markets around the world. By the end of 2023, COVID’s total economic costs reached $14 trillion in the United States alone, according to researchers at the University of Southern California. Worldwide, of course, that price tag was much higher.
And that’s their topic today, the economics of disease and what CDC and public health are doing to keep our population, and ultimately our economy, safe from the impacts of health threats.
Every episode we hear from inspiring leaders and innovators who make the world healthier and safer for us all. Today we’ll hear the story of a coordinated effort to stop a potentially deadly outbreak.
