A National Imperative: Joining Forces to Strengthen Human Services in America (Jan 2018)

THE TRANSFORMATIVE POTENTIAL OF HUMAN SERVICES

The value to society of a healthy human services ecosystem can be measured in a variety of ways. The first order impacts of effective human services are to the lives of recipients: when they receive quality services that meet their needs, they go on to lead healthier, more stable, and more productive lives. This enhanced productivity benefits society and our broader economy as well. Conversely, when people do not receive quality services in a timely fashion, future challenges in their lives can become more serious and persistent, and can require more extensive and expensive interventions later – ultimately imposing greater direct and indirect costs on them, taxpayers, and society than if issues had been appropriately addressed at an earlier date. While the immediate economic impact of human services is substantial, the long-term economic impact is even greater. High quality, effective human services are capable of having a lifetime of positive impacts on clients, allowing them to realize their fullest potential and boosting the nation’s productivity. The troubled youth who receives timely behavioral health support, the person or family experiencing homelessness who is able to find stable housing, and the children who receive nutritional support, are all more likely to be leading productive, employed lives ten and twenty years down the road as a result. Long-term impacts also include costs foregone. Imagine the life of the youth who does not receive behavioral health supports while still young, the family who is homeless and fails to find stable housing that leads to stable employment for a parent, or the child experiencing hunger who does not receive nutritional support that assures he or she is ready to learn in school. Not only are they less likely to go on to lead productive lives, but society will incur additional costs in expensive downstream services such as healthcare, child welfare, juvenile justice, and adult corrections. In fact, the evidence suggests that increased investment in “upstream” human services, if made wisely, will reduce society’s total costs. Conversely, reduction in human services investment is likely to increase total costs to society. Human services have profound long-term economic impacts, with the potential to transform our society’s financial health and well-being.

Despite spending more on healthcare than any other nation in the world, the US ranks near the bottomamong economically developed nations in a number of key health outcome metrics, including life expectancy, infant mortality, and deaths from complications or preventable diseases.

HEALTHCARE AND HUMAN SERVICES

The overall cost of healthcare for Americans is a topic of much debate and anxiety. Our per capita healthcare spending, now over $10,000 per person per year, dwarfs spending in other developed countries. 8,9  However, our results on key health metrics such as life expectancy and infant mortality are worse. This situation drives a tremendous amount of research and analysis

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