Washington

Washington's Public Health System

The Washington State Department of Health is a cabinet-level agency with authority for certain portions of the health code. The department provides resources, technical assistance, and consultation in a wide variety of areas, including epidemiology, and risk assessment. Washington also has a State Board of Health with statutory authority for certain portions of the health code. Local jurisdictions provide the bulk of direct services, although state programs retain direct service responsibility where some centralization makes sense. The state and local jurisdictions maintain an active partnership.

Washington has 35 local health jurisdictions providing front-line public health services within its 39 counties (county health departments, city-county health departments, and multi-county health districts). Nineteen local health departments serve about 60 percent of the state’s population. Of these, 20 are single-county departments where the county commissioners serve as the local board of health. Two are combined city-county departments (Seattle-King County and Tacoma-Pierce County). Their local boards of health are determined by inter-local agreement. Fourteen local health districts serve about 40 percent of the state’s population. Three districts are political subdivisions separate from the other offices of county government. Their local boards of health include county and city representation. Three districts combine more than one county (Northeast Tri-County, Chelan-Douglas, and Benton-Franklin).

Washington State Department of Health (DOH)

Activities

In Washington, NWCPHP works actively with public health colleagues to design and implement specific training activities, assist in the development of a statewide workforce development strategy, and support efforts to build greater capacity for public health education and training.  Examples include:

• Washington Department of Health (DOH) works with and provides trainings to Local Health Jurisdictions (LHJs) and state department of health staff, to help them better understand public health work at the local level. 
  
• NWCPHP worked with the Washington Department of Health (DOH) Public Health Improvement Plan on a workforce recruitment and retention study.  The study culminated with a white paper, available on DOH’s website, and presentations to DOH.
• The public health information technology (PHIT) Committee co-chairs awarded 9 mini-grants: 7 LHJs (Adams, Columbia, Grays Harbor, Jefferson, Okanogan, Skagit, and Whitman) and 2 tribes (Cowlitz and Nooksack). The focus of PHIT grants is to increase the basic information technology knowledge base among local and tribal public health professionals in Washington State.
• NWCPHP partnered with DOH to conduct a joint presentation at the 14th Annual Washington Public Health Association Joint Conference in Yakima, Washington.  The presentation focused on the partnership between NWCPHP and Washington in providing training, assessments, and evaluation of training to the public health workforce in Washington State.
• NWCPHP staff provided assistance and resources to Project Public Health Ready for Thurston County and Public Health - Seattle & King County.
• Dr. Randy Beaton, NWCPHP faculty, developed and presented a workshop on Disaster Mental Health Preparedness, to educate public health practitioners and their emergency response partners in the nine Washington regions about mental health and community health care needs in disaster response. He also created an online module on the topic.