KDHE secretary briefs committee on Medicaid priorities, lab move and $17 million maternal health grant

Janice Derek, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, told the Committee on House Health and Human Services that KDHE will focus in 2025 on Medicaid program changes, a public health laboratory relocation and implementing a newly awarded maternal health grant.

Derek opened with KDHE’s mission to “protect and improve the health and environment of all Kansans,” outlined the agency’s three divisions — Public Health, Medicaid (Division of Healthcare Finance) and Environment — and listed personnel recruitment, legal and federal compliance, and stakeholder collaboration as agency priorities.

KDHE said the state public health laboratory move is underway. Derek said KDHE completed design and construction for a new laboratory and is “in the process of moving in different components” from the Forbes Field lab to a facility behind the Judicial Center; staff expect the lab to be open “no later than June,” but noted equipment calibration and approval by outside agencies remain before full operation.

On communicable disease, KDHE described an “unprecedented tuberculosis outbreak” in one county that remains active and is ongoing in coordination with…