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State health assessment council outlines SHIP priorities: maternal health, child mental health, heart disease, STIs and environmental health
Summary
Whitney Hammond, interim deputy director for the Division of Public Health Services, and Dr. Dave Nagel, chair of the SHAW Council, briefed the committee on the State Health Assessment (SHAW) and the State Health Improvement Plan (SHIP).
Whitney Hammond, interim deputy director for the Division of Public Health Services, and Dr. Dave Nagel, chair of the SHAW Council, briefed the committee on the State Health Assessment (SHAW) and the State Health Improvement Plan (SHIP).
The nut graf: The SHAW and SHIP are statutory, council-driven efforts to map statewide health status and produce a plan for prioritized action; the council emphasized cross-sector membership and asked members to champion the plan within their organizations.
Hammond summarized the council's origins in HB 1639 (2020) and subsequent expansion by HB 157 (2021). The council represents about 40 appointed members across hospitals, public health networks, federally qualified health centers, housing, transportation and EMS. The SHIP finalized in 2023 identified four domains — access to opportunity, community (including environmental health threats), social connectedness and health status/outcomes — and the department selected five internal priority areas to pursue: heart disease; maternal and child health; childhood mental health; sexually transmitted infections; and environmental health.
Hammond said the department has linked two priorities to its internal roadmap ("Healthy Babies, Healthy Moms" and environmental health) and plans targeted actions such as improving lead screening, providing PFAS guidance to providers, and increasing access to prenatal and postnatal care.
Dr. Nagel, the SHAW Council chair, said the council's large membership aims to reduce fragmentation across the health system and encourage organizations to align behind shared measures. "This is an exciting opportunity for me. I think we're in a little bit of a transition right now, which is neat because it gives us an opportunity to re look at where we are, where we wanna go," he said.
Ending: The council will continue annual reviews to keep the SHIP current, and the department asked members to champion implementation in partner organizations and reported that the electronic SHAW materials and an annual SHIP report are available online.
