California has surpassed 61,700 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, and dozens of organizations and state leaders are demanding increased funding for the 61 public health departments across the state.Leer en españolState Sen. Dr. Richard Pan of District 6 said that funding is the first step to prevention. "Public health is also public safety; I want people to keep that in mind. You can die from a disease as much as you can die from a bullet or a fire," Pan said.Nearly 100 organizations and several state leaders have united and are demanding Gov. Gavin Newsom to provide funds to local health agencies. They say the current lack of funding could make it difficult for this industry to keep up with the workload as their force keeps shrinking."In the last decade, our public health workforce has shrunk about 20% on average. That means that we have not had the staffing capacity and resources that we needed to fully address many of the diseases and public health challenges that we're seeing day-to-day," Michelle Gibbons, executive director at County Health Executives Association of California, said.They're already facing other challenges, as life slowly goes back to normal."The rates of STDs are growing. However, we'll return back to our pre-COVID size of local health departments, which already didn't have enough staff and are now facing exacerbated public health challenges."Pan added that investment could prevent future crises. He said while the coronavirus is top of mind for many right now, there was an uptick in measles in 2019."So, we have to keep in mind that there are other diseases around, and when we have a weak public system we're not able to respond to those as well," Pan said.The California Nurses Association also expressed their dissatisfaction with the state's allocation of $2.6 million in this year's budget.Advocates and legislators said the investment in local public health infrastructure could prevent future crises and simultaneously improve equity, citing a lack of funding as a factor in the exacerbated amount of cases and deaths among minorities during the coronavirus pandemic.In a statement, the Sacramento County Public Health Department told KCRA 3 that they are needing to increase staffing and resources to address public health issues."The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on the health and well-being of local communities, particularly Black, Latino and API communities who are deeply impacted by structural inequalities in society. We must rebuild the public health infrastructure in order to prevent and respond appropriately to future public health threats. We need to increase staffing and resources to address public health issues and implement preventive measures such as investigation of communicable and sexually transmitted disease cases to prevent outbreaks and endemics, increase field nursing for at-risk mothers and infants, increase laboratory capacity hours and breadth of testing, implement public health strike teams during crisis, and provide ongoing coordination with trusted messengers and community-based organizations for community-specific communication and wrap-around services."