EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The 2021-22 CSG Healthy States National Task Force is a bipartisan, multistate effort to improve state resiliency to the challenges of the past several years and prepare states to capitalize on the opportunities that the next few years will bring.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic created an abrupt disruption to states that resulted in immediate implications for state leaders charged with oversight of fiscal, health, economic and workforce, and civic policy infrastructures. The task force’s mission to provide widely applicable, bipartisan policy recommendations was established as a means to support holistic policy strategies by state leaders to improve the health of their states.

The 2021-22 CSG Healthy States National Task Force represents a second iteration and builds off the work of the previous CSG national task forces — the 2019-20 Healthy States and Future of Work national task forces — with the recognition that a state’s well-being is not exclusive to one policy area. To prioritize its work under this holistic approach, the policy areas of human health, civic health, economic and workforce health and fiscal health were adopted as the key focuses.

Membership of the task force consisted of 57 state leaders from across 38 states and all three branches of state government. Included in this membership were state legislators, lieutenant governors, secretaries of state, supreme court justices, and many other represented offices of state government. Each task force member was assigned to one of four subcommittees, each representing one of the task force’s key focus areas.

The work of the task force was further supported by subject matter experts and private sector partners, who provided invaluable insights and resources. This diverse membership enabled the task force to benefit from the wide range of perspectives, experiences and knowledge brought to the policy conversations.

In total, the task force adopted 38 policy recommendations across the four focus policy areas. The policy recommendations were formed in response to the presentations and discussions held by the task force over the course of three in-person and virtual meetings. Central to the development of recommendations is that they passed with unanimous support of the task force subcommittee members and were structured to support varying state contexts.

Included in the task force materials are the adopted recommendations with accompanying policy research, resources and state examples. State leaders may use these materials as guides to their own policy strategies. Further information on the task force and its resources may be found on the project website, web.csg.org/csghealthystates