HRSA Releases Spanish-Language Governance PIN 

New Report Released on Best Practices for Enabling Services

Start Planning: National Health Center Week Resources Available

DELAWARE STATE HEALTH IMPROVEMENT PLAN: COMMENTS INVITED 

DOVER (June 19, 2014) - Public comments will be accepted until June 30 on the Division of Public Health's (DPH) first State Health Improvement Plan. Comments are accepted from health providers and agencies, as well as members of the general public.

DPH collaborated with non-profit organizations and medical providers to create a draft statewide health assessment. The assessment was then used to develop the improvement plan's goals.

The process led to two priority goals:

• To assure an infrastructure necessary to increase the adoption of healthy eating and active living; and
• To improve access to mental health and substance abuse services and supports to include prevention, early intervention, and treatment for all Delawareans.

Efforts now will be devoted to building a work plan to address these two goals.

"The community members that worked on the State Health Improvement Plan should be congratulated for developing important goals that if implemented will significantly improve the health of Delawareans," said Dr. Karyl Rattay, DPH director. "Now we need to make sure that progress is made toward implementing those goals."

Visit www.dhss.delaware.gov/dhss/dph/ and scroll down to the "How Do I" Section. For questions, please call 302-744-4703.

A person who is deaf, hard-of-hearing, deaf-blind, or speech-disabled can call the DPH phone number above by using TTY services. Dial 7-1-1 or 800-232-5460 to type your conversation to a relay operator, who reads your conversation to a hearing person at DPH. The relay operator types the hearing person's spoken words back to the TTY user. To learn more about TTY availability in Delaware, visit delawarerelay.com

DPH, a division of DHSS, urges Delawareans to make healthier choices with the 5-2-1 Almost None campaign: eat 5 or more fruits and vegetables each day, have no more than 2 hours of recreational screen time each day (includes TV, computer, gaming), get 1 or more hours of physical activity each day, drink almost no sugary beverages. 

Delaware officials eye medical marijuana license

State officials are in contract negotiations with a lobbyist who once worked for U.S. Sen. Tom Carper to run Delaware's first medical marijuana dispensary.

Public health officials informed Mark Lally, president of First State Compassion Center, in a letter last month that his organization submitted the top bid for the medical marijuana operation.

Officials released the letter Thursday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, a judge has scheduled a hearing Monday in a lawsuit claiming that Lally breached a contract with former Lewes city Councilman A. Judson Bennett.

Bennett says he hired Lally to help him try to obtain a medical marijuana license, but that Lally, without Bennett's knowledge, later began working with a New England group to land the contract.

Nearly three months after the Maryland health exchange decided to ditch its online marketplace for a new Web site, the exchange board has hired a small Greenbelt firm to check its work.

The board voted Tuesday to award Angarai International, a professional management consulting firm, a one-year contract for $3.55 million to audit technology development and management on the site.

Isabel FitzGerald, who was brought in to oversee the tech operation when the first Web site failed, said this firm is expected to be "more proactive" than the previous one, "so we don't wait for a report."

Those reports, filed regularly by the accounting and consulting firm BerryDunn and eventually released by the exchange, had spotted problems with the Web site up to a year before the launch and warned exchange officials to scale back on the site just before the Oct. 1 opening because it was not fully tested.