How We Research, Verify & Publish — Standards You Can Hold Us To
This page sets out our editorial principles, the six-tier source hierarchy that underpins every state guide, our handling of sensitive topics in public health, our conflicts-of-interest policy, the seven-step verification process every page passes through, and the corrections process we follow when we get something wrong.
What’s on this page
1. Editorial Mission
department-of-health.org/ exists to make U.S. state and local health agency contacts and procedures easy to find and use. The audience is broad: a parent looking up their child's immunization record, a family pursuing a death certificate for estate work, a hospital administrator filing a quarterly licensure renewal, a journalist filing a public-records request for inspection data, an attorney working on a healthcare-facility licensure appeal, a genealogist accessing 100-year-old vital records. Every page is written so that a non-expert reader can find the right contact, understand the right procedure, and reach the right office on the first try.
2. Independence
We are not affiliated with any U.S. federal agency (HHS, CDC, FDA, CMS, HRSA, NIH, SAMHSA, IHS, ASPR, OCR, OIG), any state department of health, any local health department, any healthcare facility, any professional association (AMA, AOA, ANA, AAFP), any accreditation body (ABMS, AOABOS, The Joint Commission, ACGME), or any commercial provider of vital-records expediting, background-check, or healthcare-credentialing services. Our publication is privately operated and editorially independent. Decisions about what to cover, how to describe procedures, and what we link to are made by editorial staff, not by advertisers.
3. Six-Tier Source Hierarchy
Every page is built using a tested source hierarchy. Higher-tier sources govern when sources conflict.
Tier 1 — State and local health departments
The agency itself is the primary source for that state’s procedures, contact details, vital records rules, and inspection portal. We use the agency’s published page, not third-party summaries.
Tier 2 — National coordinating bodies (ASTHO, NACCHO, CSTE, APHL)
The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the National Association of County and City Health Officials, the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, and the Association of Public Health Laboratories provide cross-state coordination, member directories, and technical guidance.
Tier 3 — Federal agencies (HHS, CDC, FDA, CMS, HRSA, NIH, SAMHSA, IHS, ASPR, OCR, OIG)
Federal-level rules, programs, and cross-references — HIPAA at OCR, Medicare/Medicaid at CMS, public-health emergency at ASPR, disease surveillance frameworks at CDC, drug and food regulation at FDA.
Tier 4 — Federal statutes, regulations & CFR sections
The actual statutory and regulatory texts: Public Health Service Act, Social Security Act, HIPAA Privacy Rule (45 C.F.R. Parts 160, 164), Safe Drinking Water Act, Federal Food Drug & Cosmetic Act, Title V Maternal & Child Health Block Grant, EMTALA, Medicare/Medicaid conditions of participation.
Tier 5 — State statutes & regulations
State public health codes, state vital records statutes, state public-records / sunshine laws, state food code adoption (typically based on FDA Food Code 2022 with amendments), state Medicaid statutes, state healthcare facility licensing acts, state immunization mandates and exemption rules.
Tier 6 — Peer-reviewed research & established public-health publications
JAMA, NEJM, MMWR (CDC), American Journal of Public Health, public-health policy journals, GAO reports, OIG audit reports. Background context only — never sole source for a current portal URL or contact.
4. Seven-Step Verification Process
- Identify the right source. Cross-check the state agency name and URL against ASTHO at astho.org; for local agencies, against NACCHO directory.
- Verify URL is live. A human editor clicks every link before publication and confirms the destination page is the actual page (not a redirect to a generic agency homepage).
- Dial-test phone numbers. Main line, vital records line, complaint hotline, healthcare facility licensing line — each tested.
- Verify addresses against agency contact pages and USPS ZIP+4 lookup. Vital records, main agency, and facility licensing addresses are often different — each is captured separately.
- Document procedures from the agency’s own published rules. Vital records request workflow, inspection complaint workflow, IIS request workflow, healthcare facility complaint workflow — captured from the rule, not a third-party summary.
- Cross-reference federal layer. Where federal agencies (CMS, FDA, OCR, OIG) intersect, the federal portal is documented as the authoritative cross-reference.
- Editor sign-off. A second editor reviews end-to-end, including a fresh read of the not-medical-advice and not-legal-advice notices and a check for any inadvertent suggestion of clinical advice.
5. Review Cycle
Every state page is reviewed quarterly. Reviews include: live-link check on every external URL, dial-test of main phone numbers, refresh of fee schedules and processing times, refresh of any program rule that has changed (state immunization exemption rules change frequently; vital records fees update; restaurant inspection scoring frameworks change).
In addition, reader-reported corrections are triaged on receipt and verified within seven business days, with a 48-hour expedited path for actively-broken phone numbers and addresses.
6. Handling Sensitive Topics
Public health touches sensitive ground. Our default is to describe agency procedure plainly without taking advocacy positions, and to make the not-medical-advice and not-legal-advice notices visible everywhere they’re relevant.
| Topic | How we handle it |
|---|---|
| Vaccination & school-exemption rules | State law and exemption rules described as written; we do not advocate for or against any specific exemption stance; CDC and state DOH guidance cited where it bears on procedure |
| Reproductive healthcare | Topic is fast-moving and state-specific — we describe agency-published guidance and decline to speculate on outcomes of pending or threatened litigation |
| Substance use & opioid response | Treatment routes (SAMHSA helpline 1-800-662-4357, state opioid response hotlines) included on every state page; nonjudgmental description of treatment options |
| Communicable disease & outbreak reporting | Reportable conditions listed as state-published; mandatory reporter framework described from statute; no speculation about specific outbreaks |
| Death certificate cause-of-death | Restricted-access rules described per state law; we do not publish identifiable cause-of-death information |
| Healthcare facility complaints | Complaints described as procedure; we do not adjudicate or characterise specific facilities beyond what the state survey agency publishes |
| HIPAA | Always routed to HHS-OCR; we describe coverage clearly and never imply we can take complaints |
| Mental health & suicide | 988 Lifeline, SAMHSA helpline, and Disaster Distress Helpline visible; we follow safe-messaging guidance for anything touching suicide |
| Disability & accommodations | ADA framework described; we link to ada.gov for federal complaints and state human-rights commissions for state-level claims |
7. Presumption of Accuracy & Inspection Reporting
For restaurant and healthcare-facility inspection data, we describe what the official inspection record says — typically a date of inspection, a category of violation if any, and the disposition (re-inspection required, license suspended, or no further action). We do not characterise the establishment or facility beyond what the agency record shows. Where an inspection record has been disputed or a violation cured, we note that fact when it appears in the agency record.
If a state agency publishes a restaurant inspection score of 92 with three minor violations cured on-site, we describe that. We do not extrapolate from the score to a recommendation about the restaurant. If a hospital has a CMS Care Compare star rating, we describe the rating, not whether you should go there.
8. Corrections
- Acknowledge within 1 business day. Every correction email gets a human acknowledgement.
- Verify within 7 business days. We re-check against the agency’s own page and respond.
- Expedited path for actively-broken contacts. Phone numbers that don’t work and addresses that USPS rejects get a 48-hour target.
- Material corrections are noted. Where a substantive fact has changed (e.g., a vital records fee increase, a new inspection scoring system), the page is updated and the next quarterly review timestamp is reset.
- We do not retroactively edit history. If a page is materially wrong, we fix the current version and note the correction at the bottom for at least 30 days.
9. Conflicts of Interest
Editorial staff do not hold financial interests in: any state or federal health agency, any healthcare facility, any healthcare staffing or credentialing service, any vital-records expediting service, any background-check or CRA business, any pharmaceutical company, or any company whose products or services we describe directly. Where any unavoidable adjacent interest exists, it is disclosed inline. Editorial staff who have personal connections to any state or local health agency we cover are recused from editing that state’s page.
10. AI & Automation Policy
We use software tools for spell-check, grammar review, and routine drafting assistance — like most modern publications. However, no editorial fact, contact detail, URL, address, phone number, fee schedule, or procedure on department-of-health.org/ is published from AI without human verification against the originating agency source. Every page passes through human editorial review, including the seven-step verification process described above. We do not auto-generate or auto-publish state pages.
11. Commercial Position
The site is funded by display advertising. The official agency contact always comes first on every page, before any commercial reference. We do not take advertising from:
- Vital-records “expediting” services that promise turnaround faster than the state office can deliver
- Operations selling FCRA-prohibited background-check products dressed up as healthcare-credentialing solutions
- Pseudoscience, anti-vaccine, or anti-public-health marketing
- Any operation that claims to “remove” public-health inspection records or healthcare-facility licensure history
- Any operation marketing as if it were a federal or state agency
12. Editorial Staff & Bylines
department-of-health.org/ operates under a unified editorial byline ("department-of-health.org/ Editorial") because state guides are produced and reviewed by multiple editors. For specific source attribution on any factual statement, see the page's footnotes or contact us.
Spotted Something Wrong? Tell Us.
Reader-reported corrections are our priority queue. Acknowledge in 1 business day; verify in 7 business days; 48-hour expedited path for actively-broken contacts.
📧 info@department-of-health.org