The Bartholomew County Health Department is about to receive an sizable influx of new revenue.
A matching grant of $938,011 has been awarded to the Public Health Nursing and Environmental Health divisions for the first year of a new state program called Health First Indiana.
The matching grant is a new revenue stream that replaces two state funding sources for counties that opt into the new program, Bartholomew County Director of Environmental Health Link Fulp said.
One is the Health Maintenance Fund, which provides financial assistance to help all 92 Indiana counties. The other is the Health Trust of Indiana, which receives its money through tobacco settlements, Fulp said.
Health First Indiana is designed to improve Indiana’s health outcomes – a term referring to events occurring as a result of intervention such as physical examinations and laboratory testing.
“We are required to spend this money on certain aspects that the state is requiring each health department to do,” Fulp said. “Luckily for our department, we were already doing a majority of these core services.”
Fulp says a priority of the Health First Indiana is to bring health departments in smaller counties up to speed with larger ones in providing basic services. The program was also in response to Indiana’s generally poor public health spending rating when compared to states across the country, state health officials said.
In nursing care, Health First Indiana guarantees core services for trauma, injury prevention, tobacco/vaping cessation, chronic disease prevention, maternal care and child health. In creating the program last year, state lawmakers also listed communicable disease prevention, sanitary inspections, health screenings, access to immunizations, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and infections, child fatality reviews, and partnerships with schools as core services.
About 78% of the funding will support preventative and health outcome-related activities, according to a news release from the Indiana Dept. of Health.
For the environmental division, Fulp says the core services include vital records, food protection, housing problems, sewage complaints, on-site wastewater, mosquito control, and illegally manufactured controlled substances.
But within these perimeters, Health First Indiana allows local health departments to determine specifics on how the funding will be spent, the news release states.
Six counties, including neighboring Johnson, have chosen not to opt into the Health First Indiana program because they feel there are too many strings attached.
For example, the county match must amount to the average of county tax-levy-related funds distributed to the local health department in 2021, 2022 and 2023. With six distributions (spring and fall of each year), the average over the past three years totals $937,776 in Bartholomew County.
In addition to matching funds, each county opting into the program must comply with extensive reporting and metrics requirements.
State lawmakers funded Health First Indiana with $75 million for its inaugural year, followed by $150 million in 2025.
