The Fund for a Healthy Maine and the Healthy Maine Partnerships are in Jeopardy!

All Healthy Maine Partnerships and Coordinated School Health Programs would be eliminated under the current proposed state budget.

Thank you for all of your support as demonstrated by your calls and letters to legislators to tell them about your experience with working with CTBH.

HOWEVER, once again, it is of utmost importance for you to call your legislators. This weekend please call your Maine State Senator and Representative to explain why you oppose eliminating the system of Healthy Maine Partnerships statewide, as proposed in the Governor's Supplemental Budget for the fiscal year 2013 that starts July 2012. You can find their contact information here.

The message: "Don't eliminate the system of Healthy Maine Partnerships, our communities need them to provide essential public health services."

Additional information:

Healthy Maine Partnerships (HMPs) are the structure and funding for work on many local public health priorities, like substance abuse prevention, childhood obesity prevention, lead poisoning prevention, colorectal cancer awareness, and worksite wellness.
HMPs are the state's local tobacco control system, working in every Maine city and town.
The system of HMPs has been 30 years in the making, and if cut from the budget, could be gone forever.
- 20 years of bipartisan studies and recommendations have supported HMPs - even as recently as December 2011!
- Funded with the tobacco settlement money - NOT taxes.
- 10+ years of direct community work turning the corner on tobacco use, youth substance abuse, and preventable disease.
120 people throughout Maine, including 31 school personnel, will lose their jobs if the HMPs are cut.
HMPs have leveraged over $30,000,000 (yes, $30 Million) additional dollars for their community efforts across the state, but without the people and system, little more $$ will be awarded.
"Community-School Grants" is the HMP budget line from the state budget that will be cut.
HMPs mobilize action in emergencies. The HMPs were the boots on the ground personnel in minimizing the H1N1 epidemic during that public health emergency. Don't let this system be gone when the next emergency hits Maine.
Healthy Maine Partnerships bring public health to every community in Maine! In an equitable way!
Healthy Maine Partnerships ARE local public health.

Note:

If tobacco taxes on products such as loose tobacco, little cigars, and chew tobacco were equal to those on cigarettes, it is predicted that the revenue would be about $8,500,000.
This $8.5 million would support the statewide system of Healthy Maine Partnerships fully.
Higher taxes on all tobacco products are good public health - youth are less likely to start tobacco use, and people who use tobacco are more likely to quit.

Remember:

Choose To Be Healthy, like all Healthy Maine Partnerships, implements sound, evidenced based interventions that reduce chronic disease and the high cost of treating them.
A Robert Wood Johnson Study has shown that for every $1.00 Maine spends on prevention, we save $7.50 in health care, treatment and puiblic safety costs.
Here are some talking points on the importance of the Fund for a Healthy Maine.
The December 2011 bi-partisan Legislative Commission to Study Allocations of The Fund For A Healthy Maine reported that they “recognize the importance of investments in public health and prevention and believes that the original intent of the funding should be maintained…” Read the full report.
Maine’s Public Health infrastructure is what helps to make Maine one of the healthiest states in the nation, which attracts people to live and work here.
Having community based coalitions allow us to collaborate and to write for and receive federal grants like the $625,000 Drug Free Communities Grant to prevent underage substance abuse in Southern York County.

Who We Are

The Choose To Be Healthy Partnership (CTBH) is a comprehensive community health coalition that works to reduce the incidence of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, chronic lung disease and substance abuse. CTBH staff, members and partners work in the towns of Berwick, Eliot, Kittery, North Berwick, South Berwick, Wells, Ogunquit, Lebanon, and York.

Choose To Be Healthy is largely funded with tobacco settlement money from the Fund for a Healthy Maine through the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Additional financial and in-kind support comes from federal and state grants, foundations, local organizations and our lead agency, York Hospital.

What We Do

Choose To Be Healthy promotes community-level support of personal and public health. Examples of these supports are healthy nutrition policies for schools and community groups, tobacco-free recreation area policies for towns, indoor winter walking trails in public buildings, and advocating for better parental monitoring practices for under-age alcohol use prevention.

The mission of Choose To Be Healthy is to provide and promote opportunities for adults and youth in our Southern York County community to choose behaviors that help them to achieve their optimal health. We do this by maintaining a vibrant coalition with diverse community representation that is a part of the statewide Healthy Maine Partnership system; by assessing community assets and needs; and by applying this assessment to guide our implementation of evidenced based health improvement and disease prevention strategies.

Resources

For more info on the Healthy Maine Partnership system go to Healthy Maine Partnerships.

Contact

For more information, contact Coalition Director Deborah Erickson-Irons at
derickson-irons@yorkhospital.com or 207-439-6504.