KANSAS DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & ENVIRONMENT BILL GRAVES, GOVERNOR Gary R. Mitchell, Secretary

September 24, 1997

Contact: Don Brown

785-296-1529

Strategic Plan to Guide State Division of Health

Secretary of Health and Environment Gary R. Mitchell today unveiled a strategic plan for the Department's Division of Health designed to enhance the division's customer service.

"This strategic plan addresses not only the customer service the division provides one-on-one, but the service necessary to assure the greater community's health is protected," said Mitchell. "That kind of service goes largely unnoticed by the public, but it's the reason people can safely drink water and eat food, receive immunizations for various diseases, obtain birth certificates or carry out a myriad of other activities."

Public health is a little different from the type of services provided by physicians and other health care providers. Individuals go to a doctor to be cured. Public health works, through dozens of programs, to keep a community safe and healthy.

"Through a participative process, the division committed to action in seven major areas," said Dr. Steven Potsic, state health officer and director of the Division of Health. "Over the next five years these goals will become our action plan, driving efforts to serve all Kansans."

The seven goals are to:

• provide effective public health leadership in Kansas,
• participate in the development and dissemination of data and information capacity for assessment, policy analysis and program decision-making at all levels,
• focus on preventive (to include primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention measures) public health issues to systematically attack the underlying causes of disease or hazardous conditions and to ensure safe and healthy conditions,
• assure resources for core public health functions
• strengthen the relationship between the division and local health departments to assure an effective, community-based public health system,
• foster and mobilize private/public community partnerships to identify preventive strategies and implement solutions to the Public Health Priority Problems, and
• assure that essential health services are available.

The department developed the strategic plan with support from the Kansas Health Foundation, soliciting input from a broad network of individuals and organizations committed to improving public health in Kansas.

"That community involvement was essential," said Potsic. "Because over the next five years these goals will direct our actions and we know that partnerships are key to sucessfully assuring public health services for all Kansans."