For over 75 years, social workers have been an essential part of the public health team who strive to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals, families and communities within our state. We are devoted to helping individuals and communities work through challenges that impact their health and wellbeing. We perform a variety of activities and functions, including direct service, population-based public health planning, program administration, advocacy, education, emergency response, psychosocial assessment and counseling. We strive to address social determinants of health for our citizens and to help individuals and families alleviate barriers to accessing health care.
Our licensed professional social workers work in areas such as:
- TB
- HIV/STD
- Family Planning
- Children & Youth with Special Health Care Needs
- Maternal Child Health
- Children's Health and Perinatal Services
- Women's Health
- Community Engagement
- Immunizations
- State Health Improvement
Here are some examples of the specialty areas where we work within the Department of Public Health:
Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN) Social Workers provide interventions for children and families living with certain medical diagnoses so they feel emotionally supported in managing their health conditions. They also help to address any barriers the families face in getting access to the resources or care that they need to be healthy and successful.
HIV/STD Social Workers focus on providing risk reduction counseling, linkage to care and community resources to clients referred due to high-risk sexual behavior. Social Workers also maintain relationships with medical providers (i.e. Ryan White clinics) to ensure HIV clients are in care and receiving appropriate case management services, as well as refer clients for preventative services (i.e. PrEP).
Tuberculosis (TB) Social Workers assess patients with latent and active TB disease to identify any issues they may have that would interfere with their ability to comply with consistently receiving or completing TB treatment. If any such issues are identified, it is the social worker's role to seek out and connect the patient to community resources that might address those issues.
Community Engagement Social Workers collaborate with partners on the local level to address health priorities, which are chosen by each community and can vary from healthy eating/active living to behavioral health. These social workers leverage relationships with key community partners across various sectors to implement policy, systems, and environmental changes to improve the health of the entire community, such as working with a school district to implement open community use.