Public Health Division

The Public Health Division's mission is to improve the length and quality of life for all North Dakotans. To accomplish our mission, we focus on six goals including two cross-cutting goals that help guide our work division-wide. These cross-cutting principles are to Improve Health Equity and Use Evidence-based Practices to Make Data-Driven Decisions.

Key Functions

The Public Health Division aligns each of our functions to these four goals:

• Create Healthy & Vibrant Communities. We strive to achieve this by reducing the risk of infectious disease, preventing and reducing chronic diseases, promoting safe and sanitary food establishments, supporting communities in building resiliency, promoting community driven wellness and increasing healthy lifestyles and behaviors.
• Enhance & Improve Systems of Care. This includes improving access to care in underserved and rural areas, enhancing health care through technology, ensuring access to affordable health and preventive services, appropriately regulating, and educating workforce to enhance quality and safe care, driving health-in-all policy agendas and establishing system level partnerships across continuums of care.
• Strengthen Population-Based Health Interventions. This involves preventing and reducing tobacco and other substance misuse, preventing violence, intentional and unintentional injury, reducing the risk of vaccine preventable diseases, reducing adverse health outcomes through early detection of disease, and achieving a healthy weight for children and adults.
• Promote Public Health Readiness & Response. We achieve this by maintaining emergency communication and alerting systems, managing the state medical supply cache, ensuring capacity to detect and respond to disease outbreaks, coordinating and facilitating the public health statewide response team and ensuring statewide emergency medical services readiness. 

Public Health Division Sections:

• Disease Control & Forensic Pathology – Supports disease prevention, surveillance, and identification as well as epidemiologic investigation and forensic examinations.
• Healthy & Safe Communities – Provides support for individuals, families, and communities by providing quality programs that protect and enhance the health and safety of all North Dakotans.​​​​​​​​​​
• Health Response & Licensure – Leads the planning and coordination of the public health and medical response as well as the implementation of regulation programs that protect the health and safety of North Dakotans, including ensuring North Dakota’s inpatient care facilities, outpatient programs, and staff-provided-services meet relevant health care standards.
• Laboratory Services – Provides rapid, accurate detection and identification of organisms that may threaten the public’s health.
• Health Statistics & Performance – Coordinates epidemiological studies, investigations, and surveillance activities; conducts data analysis; manages the registration and certification of vital events in ND and provides expertise and consultation on disease surveillance, data acquisition, database management, quality improvement, and health intervention activities.