Fill out your Albany Public Health Budget Brackets today!

Albany’s 2013 March Budget Bracket

Get and print our your own brackets Albany's 2013 March Budget Bracket [PDF 8MB]

New York’s Exciting New Public Health Budget Tournament

Here’s how to play. Pick the chronic illness support and prevention programs you’d like New York to continue to fund in each bracket. At each step of the budget process the state will pick winners and losers in the fight to continue to serve the public. Fill out your bracket today. There will be surprises, twists, turns and fun for the whole family.*

*Process will not actually be “fun for the whole family” if your family is in need of or currently using any of the programs referenced in Albany’s 2013 March Budget Bracket

Governor Cuomo's budget employs a new way to determine funding for the state's public health programs.  Instead of publicly disclosing the proposed funding level for each of the state's 89 public health programs, his plan envisions a system of competitive grant making in which the Commissioner of Health will determine funding levels based on the best available evidence. 

Unlike spring college basketball tournaments, participants in this competition are involved in different "sports."  How will Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis and tobacco programs "compete"? 

Also unlike college basketball there are no rules for who will win.  Nobody knows how the state will award contracts on April 1st under this system.  Will currently funded groups have to wait for the new rules to "compete"?  If so, will they have to shut down for months while the rules for the "competition" are developed? 

NY's tobacco and cancer screening programs are currently woefully underfunded.  NY should be boosting its support, not contemplating cuts.  NOTE:  This chart only shows 4 of 6 competitive pools.   

For more information contact Blair Horner, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network at [email protected] or 518 727 4506.

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