The vision of the Department is to ideally achieve a state of Health and Wellness for all Arizonans and our mission is to promote, protect, and improve the health and wellness of individuals and communities in Arizona. The updated mission and vision statements are helping us build public health value in-house as well as in the community. The format was modernized and ADHS is making an effort to educate our partners and reinvigorate staff on our goals.
We’re among the largest and most complex of state agencies. With over 1,600 employees and an annual budget of more than $1.8B, we provide a wide variety of services and a diversity of programs housed within its five divisions: behavioral health; licensing; planning and operations; public health prevention; and public health preparedness. The two-fold mission of public health services includes prevention and preparedness for the state. The public behavioral health system oversees services for 150,000 enrolled clients and the state’s only public psychiatric hospital, the Arizona State Hospital. The division for licensing is charged with certification of nursing homes, assisted living and child care centers, hospitals and other health care facilities. The division for planning and operations oversees the budget, procurement, audit and special investigations, information technology, workforce development, rule-making, human resources, policy, continuous quality improvement, and accreditation.
Our strategic priorities are the pathways we use to achieve targeted improvements in public health outcomes. We’re committed to moving along with our partners in local health departments toward voluntary public health accreditation. The work towards accreditation will require the agency to look at the statewide public health system as a whole, collaborate with stakeholders, and provide evidence that our work meets the ten essential public health services. The ten essential services were set as a national standard in 1994 by a steering committee consisting of all US Public Health Service agencies and representatives from other major public health organizations. Accreditation focuses on quality, transparency, and partnerships. Through the accreditation process, our leadership will identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for continuing to build public health infrastructure in a way that will best align our resources with key priorities.
Our new updated Strategic Plan lays out the framework for how we’ll use quality improvement, lean methodologies, best practices, and strategic alignment to achieve our vision of “Health and Wellness for All Arizonans”
