© 2003 American Public Health Association
J. Rush Pierce Jr, is the Health Authority for the Amarillo Bi-City-County Health District, Amarillo, Tex. Claudia P. Blackburn is with the City of Amarillo Department of Public Health. Correspondence: Requests for reprints should be sent to J. Rush Pierce Jr, MD, P.O. Box 1971, Amarillo, TX 79105-1971 (e-mail: jrpiercejr@imaamarillo.com).
We read with interest the brief by Keane, Marx, and Ricci, summarizing the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) study of privatization in local health departments.1 In 1996, the sale of our communitys public hospital to a for-profit corporation privatized most medical services for the poor. At that time, local political events forced the separation of our communitys indigent care programs from other public health functions, and our local health department stopped providing most personal health services and immunizations.2
Our community is attempting to understand the effects of privatization on some of the health care activities that
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