Submitted
Kansas earned a High-Performance Tier ranking recently in the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) Ready or Not Annual Report due to the work of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s (KDHE) Emergency Preparedness program.
Ready or Not 2024: Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism measures states’ readiness to respond to a spectrum of health emergencies and to provide ongoing public health services.
The annual report calculates each state’s ability to respond to a variety of public health emergencies while still providing the everyday public health services communities rely on. Each state is judged based on nine key indicators and then sorted into three readiness levels: high, middle and low.
Kansas and 20 other states and the District of Columbia ranked in the “high tier” category for emergency preparedness.
“Emergency preparedness is such an important part of the work that we do,” said KDHE Deputy Secretary for Public Health Ashley Goss. “We can’t do this alone. Our high ranking spotlights the important role that Kansas public health departments play in ensuring that our communities remain safe, healthy, and prepared for future disasters and other emergencies. The partnership KDHE has with local health departments and other agencies and partners across the state has been instrumental in any successes we achieve.”
Areas of strong performance, according to the report, include:
• Kansas participates in the Nurse Licensure Compact.
• Kansas is accredited by both the Public Health Accreditation Board and the Emergency
Management Accreditation Program.
• Funding for public health increased in Kansas from FY2022 to FY2023.
• Fewer than 4 percent of the population used contaminated community water systems.
• Kansas ranked slightly above average in percentage of workers who used paid time off between March 2018 and 2023.
• The Public Health Laboratory has a written plan for a six- to eight-week surge in testing capacity.