About Us

What This Site Is For

Public health in the United States is delivered through a layered system. Federal agencies — the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Indian Health Service (IHS), the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) — set policy, fund programs, and respond to multistate emergencies. State departments of health do most of the front-line public-health work: licensing hospitals and nursing homes, issuing birth and death certificates, inspecting restaurants, tracking communicable disease, running state immunization information systems, administering WIC, monitoring drinking water, regulating environmental health, and coordinating emergency preparedness. Local (county or city) health departments operate the closest layer — clinics, community immunization, school health, restaurant inspections in many states, and on-the-ground response.

The agency you need depends on the task. A birth certificate goes to the state vital records office, but in some states the county recorder also issues certified copies for births within that county. A restaurant complaint goes to the local health department in most states but to the state in a few. A nursing home complaint goes to the state survey agency under CMS authority. A communicable-disease report goes to the local or state epidemiologist. A drinking water complaint goes to the state primacy agency under EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Act framework. A HIPAA complaint goes to the HHS Office for Civil Rights.

department-of-health.org/ is the practical reference. Every state page lists the verified department of health name, the agency's official URL, the vital records office, the restaurant inspection portal, the state immunization information system, the healthcare facility licensing division, the HIPAA contact, the public-records request process, the address, and the phone number — all manually verified against the agency's own page.

We are completely independent. We are not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Indian Health Service (IHS), the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), or any state or local health department.

The Eight Categories of Information You’ll Find on Each State Page

What You’ll Find on Each State Department of Health Page

• State agency name and structure — official name (Department of Health, Department of Public Health, Department of Health Services, Department of Health and Human Services — varies by state), commissioner or director, governance structure
• Official agency URL — verified live, the state’s .gov domain
• Vital records office — physical and mailing addresses, fees for certified copies (typically $15–$30), processing time, expedited options, VitalChek availability, who can request which records
• State immunization information system (IIS) — how individuals request their record, how parents request a child’s record, school admission requirements, religious and medical exemption rules
• Restaurant inspection portal — direct link to the public inspection database, jurisdictional split (state vs. county), foodborne-illness complaint phone
• Healthcare facility licensing division — state survey agency contact, hospital licensing, nursing home licensing, ASC licensing, home health and hospice licensing, complaint hotline
• Communicable disease reporting — 24/7 disease reporting hotline (varies by state), list of reportable conditions, mandatory reporter framework
• WIC program — clinic locator, eligibility, application process, EBT card framework
• Drinking water — primacy agency contact (state or EPA), public water system search, private well guidance
• HIPAA contact — privacy officer for the agency’s covered entity functions; cross-reference to HHS Office for Civil Rights for federal complaints
• Public-records request — state public-records / sunshine law citations, records officer contact, fee schedule, response timeline
• Public health emergency contact — state health operations center, ASPR-region coordination
• Federal cross-references — CDC program contacts, FDA jurisdictional cross-reference, CMS conditions of participation, HRSA grant programs

How We Find and Verify — The Seven-Step Process

1. Identify the right authoritative source. We start with the official state department of health page on the state’s .gov domain, cross-checked against the ASTHO directory at astho.org.
2. Verify the URL and phone number. A human editor clicks every link before publication and confirms the destination is the actual page. We dial-test main-line phone numbers periodically.
3. Verify the agency address. Department of health offices are sometimes split across multiple buildings (vital records building separate from main agency, separate facility licensing office). We cross-check both physical and mailing addresses against the agency’s contact page and against USPS ZIP+4 lookup.
4. Document vital records, restaurant inspection, IIS, and facility licensing details. Each is captured from the agency’s own published page, with direct deep-links rather than home-page redirects.
5. Cross-check the federal cross-reference. CDC, FDA, CMS, HRSA, HHS-OCR are documented from the federal source with current URLs.
6. Cross-check the legal framework. State public-records laws, state vital records statutes, state public-health emergency authorities, federal HIPAA framework — current citations.
7. Editor sign-off. A second editor reviews the page end-to-end before it goes live, including a fresh check on the not-medical-advice and not-legal-advice notices.

Nothing on this site is auto-scraped. Nothing is generated from a stale database. Every contact is human-verified before publication and re-verified on a quarterly cycle.

The National & Federal Layer — Key Sources

Who This Site Is For

• People who need vital records — birth certificates for passports, school enrollment, REAL ID; death certificates for estate work; marriage and divorce records for legal proceedings
• Parents — locating their child’s immunization record, navigating school exemption rules, finding a WIC clinic
• Patients and family — looking up a hospital or nursing home complaint, navigating CMS Care Compare, filing a HIPAA complaint with HHS-OCR
• Restaurant patrons and food-safety reporters — checking inspection scores, reporting a foodborne illness, finding the right county or state inspector
• Healthcare facility administrators — facility licensing renewal, survey response, conditions of participation
• Hospital infection-prevention and epidemiology teams — reportable disease workflow, state lab contact, outbreak response coordination
• Genealogists and family historians — state-by-state vital records access rules (year thresholds vary widely)
• Health-care attorneys — locating the right state agency for licensure, public-records, or HIPAA matters
• Journalists and researchers — accessing public health data, state public-records request workflow, reportable-disease aggregates
• Travelers — international travel immunization records, yellow-fever certificates, CDC travel guidance cross-reference
• Public-health students and faculty — agency reference for coursework

What We Don’t Do

• We don’t provide medical advice, diagnose conditions, recommend treatments, or interpret symptoms — see a licensed clinician
• We don’t provide legal advice, take cases, or represent any party — consult a licensed attorney
• We don’t operate a CRA, sell background checks, or provide FCRA-permissible-purpose reports
• We don’t issue, certify, or expedite vital records — that’s the state vital records office (some states use VitalChek for online ordering)
• We don’t take complaints about restaurants, hospitals, or nursing homes — those go to the appropriate state or local agency
• We don’t take HIPAA complaints — those go to HHS Office for Civil Rights
• We don’t process WIC applications — those go to the state WIC agency or local clinic
• We don’t operate state immunization information systems — those are state DOH systems
• We don’t provide HIPAA-covered services or maintain protected health information
• We don’t sell your data — see Privacy Policy

How We Pay for the Site

department-of-health.org/ is funded by display advertising. Editorial content — verified contact details, walkthroughs, and procedure descriptions — is never altered to favour any advertiser. The official agency contact always comes first on every page, before any commercial reference. We do not accept advertising from operations that conflict with the public-information mission, including any service that promises to "expedite" vital records faster than the state office can deliver, products that misuse public-health data for FCRA-prohibited purposes, or any pseudoscience or anti-public-health marketing. The full position is on our Editorial Policy and Disclaimer.

Corrections and Feedback

State and local health agency contact details change — agency reorganisations, new commissioners, office relocations, website redesigns, and form revisions are routine. If you spot something on the site that doesn’t match the live agency page, or you’ve called and confirmed something is wrong, please email us. Reader-reported corrections are our priority queue and get a response within seven business days, with a 48-hour expedited path for actively-broken phone numbers and addresses.