Diseases like Zika and Ebola know no party affiliation…but public health responses do

"Polio Wears No Party Label." This politically agnostic slogan was coined in the early 1940s by the March of Dimes in the midst of one of the worst epidemics of disease in the U.S. Now polio is eradicated from North America and virtually eradicated from the world, with only small endemic pockets in Eastern African and Southern Asia. The story of the success of polio is a remarkable example of science (vaccination) and policy (political backing from President Franklin D. Roosevelt) working hand in hand at local and federal levels to control a disease that affected Americans from all social and economic brackets.

The successes of public health occur in conjunction, and sometimes in spite of, political climate. No reasonable person would argue that vaccination, access to potable water, workplace and motor vehicle safety, improved food supplies, and so on, are interventions we can do without. However, the policies behind implementing these interventions can lead to a watering down of the effect, differential implementation that favors one group of people over another, or even abandonment of legislation altogether.

For example, take the recent Zika virus outbreak, a cause for concern for women of childbearing age who are pregnant or may soon be pregnant. While infection with the virus is largely a minor illness in adults, it can have devastating effects on the developing fetus in a pregnant woman. The factors leading one pregnancy to miscarriage, another to severe birth defects, and another to an apparently healthy child are unknown. Nor are we able to quantify this risk given infection. To this end, in February President Obama requested close to $2 billion in funding from Congress for the study and response to Zika to try to answer some of these unknowns. Congress balked, and is still politicking over the details, despite some emergency money being available.

As another example, in the Ebola virus outbreak in Western Africa that peaked in 2014, the debate "To Quarantine or Not to Quarantine" travelers became a platform for political fear mongering that directly contradicted the science: an asymptomatic individual is not infectious. These proposed quarantine policies also violated basic human rights. Again, political pandering trumped science.

Viruses like Ebola and Zika do not favor one class of people over another; but the built environment and resource allocation may lead to socioeconomic disparities where disease becomes more frequent in certain groups. This is where policy intersects with population health.

Turning again to the polio epidemic, it unfortunately takes a major public health concern before bi-partisanship trumps political advancement. We have already seen evidence of that in the reaction to recent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Since many of the efforts to protect the public's health are conducted at the local level, we should join in (or start) grassroots efforts that are capable of influencing local government's direction when it comes to population health. We are all at risk for disease. Politics should not stand in the way.

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Neal D. Goldstein, PhD, MBI, is an epidemiologist, writer, and public health advocate. He writes a science blog, which is available at www.goldsteinepi.com/blog, and can be followed on Twitter (@goldsteinepi).

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