How Ohio’s GOP governor sells public health: Don’t call it that.

How Ohio’s GOP governor sells public health: Don’t call it that.

Many Republicans across the country have long dismissed public health initiatives as “nanny state” overreach, with the coronavirus pandemic only further politicizing government’s efforts to save lives.

But one GOP governor — Ohio’s Mike DeWine — says he’s hit on a strategy to get conservative lawmakers and taxpayers to pay attention: focus on the children.

“It’s hard to sell stuff on the basis of public health,” DeWine said in an interview ahead of Wednesday’s State of the State address. “Everyone wants to see kids do better. … It’s easier when you couch it in those terms instead of talking about building up what some people will look at as some bureaucracy that interferes in my life.”

The two-term governor has struggled to enact key parts of his public health agenda with a deeply conservative legislature blocking his initiatives, as detailed by The Washington Post in an examination last year of how red-state politics shave years off American lives.

The Post’s findings, DeWine said, spelled out the alarming statistics for his state in human terms. Roughly 1 in 5 Ohioans will die before they turn 65, a similar life expectancy to citizens of Slovakia and Ecuador, relatively poor countries.

DeWine said he instructed his Cabinet to read The Post’s life expectancy coverage as part of his efforts to make improving his constituents’ longevity a centerpiece of his remaining years as governor. He even met with his former state health director, Amy Acton, to ask how he could improve Ohio’s health outcomes, according to Acton, who has been floated as a Democratic candidate for statewide office.

Appearing before the state legislature Wednesday, DeWine announced initiatives aimed at improving the lives of Ohio’s children, using rhetoric that emphasizes traditional conservative values.

“The single most important thing we can do for Ohio’s future is to ensure that all Ohio children — all of our children, no matter where they live, no matter who their parents are — have the opportunity to live up to their full God-given potential,” he said.

Roughly 1 in 5 Ohioans will die before they turn 65, a similar life expectancy to citizens of Slovakia and Ecuador, relatively poor countries.

He promoted safe sleep for infants, early education, mental health care, poison control and gun-violence prevention. He touted an initiative to install health clinics in Appalachian schools. He highlighted a pilot program to provide home visits from nurses to help new mothers.

He proposed legislation to ban flavored vaping and cigarettes that he said tobacco companies use to hook children. He continued to champion a stricter seat-belt law. The Post previously detailed tobacco and vehicular deaths as preventable contributors to Ohio’s lagging life expectancy.

And he did all of it without mentioning those two words: public health.

Republican legislators have previously thwarted DeWine’s attempts to strengthen the state’s seat-belt laws, a measure public health experts say saves lives. DeWine himself lost his daughter Becky in a car crash more than 30 years ago.

Last fall, legislation he had supported for years to curb distracted driving went into effect, allowing police to pull over drivers for using their phones.

Since then, preliminary data shows a significant drop in distraction-related crashes, as citations for distracted driving have more than doubled, according to Lt. Ray Santiago, Ohio State Highway Patrol spokesman.

“We are seeing an immediate success,” Santiago said.

DeWine is redoubling his efforts to codify Ohio troopers’ ability to pull over drivers for not wearing a seat belt, a measure 35 states have in place. More than 500 Ohioans who lose their lives in car crashes each year are not wearing seat belts.

“That’s why I will be coming to you with a proposal to save young people’s lives — and adults — through a primary seat-belt law,” DeWine told legislators Wednesday. “We know it works. It’s a vote that will save lives.”

Ohio’s deeply conservative legislature has fought DeWine’s attempts to curtail tobacco use, including limiting the ability of local jurisdictions to ban flavored vaping and preempting efforts to raise tobacco taxes. Roughly 1 in 5 Ohio adults smoke, one of the highest rates in the country.

DeWine encouraged the Biden administration to take action on a nationwide menthol ban that experts say could prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths in predominantly Black communities. The ban, originally expected last year, has been delayed because of political pressures and warnings that it could alienate some of President Biden’s Black supporters ahead of the election, according to White House officials.

“We have an obligation to protect Ohio children,” he said, “and we have the ability to do that.”

The governor also used the speech as a platform for children’s access to health care, school and a brighter economic future — essential efforts to lengthen their life expectancy, he told The Post.

The investments may not pay off in his political lifetime, he said, but they will change the lives of future generations.

“While we can talk about the legislature overriding a veto once in a while and you can talk about them not be willing to pass a tobacco tax, the truth is that on almost every one of these children’s programs they have given me the money that I’ve asked for,” he told The Post.

Dan Diamond contributed to this report.