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Saving Lives: Gene and Sandy celebrate a lifetime of accepting youth into their home
For 12 years, Gene and Sandy tried to have a child. Gene worked as a pastor in Jerome, and she taught special education. They seemed destined to raise children in a loving, stable home, but it didn’t happen. They grew frustrated and burdened with all that love and no child to give it to. They prayed on it.“Some people know why they're on the planet,” Gene said. “My wife is on the
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I’d like to share a report I read recently about exciting work being done in the Division of Behavioral Health to help Idaho youth overcome serious challenges and become stronger emotionally and mentally.
The work involved a learning collaborative approach, which I was thrilled
May 11 is the end of the federal Public Health Emergency declared to help combat COVID-19. This provides a great opportunity to reflect on the enormity and impacts of the pandemic as well as celebrate the rapid roll-out of public health protections, vaccines, therapeutics,
May is National Foster Care Month and an opportunity to build further awareness about issues affecting foster care in Idaho. There are around 1,500 foster children at any given time in Idaho, and we’re always in need of more families willing to help, whether as kinship
The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare continues to re-evaluate eligibility for people enrolled in Medicaid who have been protected from being disenrolled from the program during the pandemic
Students across the Northwest were encouraged to get creative and help raise awareness about the dangers of radon gas by participating in the 2023 Northwest Radon Poster Contest
The Department of Health and Welfare is committed to optimizing health and preventing crises. We believe that all Idahoans should be as healthy and self-sufficient as possible. We believe it so much that it’s the third goal in our Strategic Plan.
There are several ways to
The top three leading causes of death in Idaho in 2021 were diseases of the heart, cancer, and COVID-19. Almost 9,000 Idahoans died of those causes out of 18,334 total deaths. The next three categories--accidents, respiratory diseases, and Alzheimer's disease--resulted in
One child abused is one child too many.
All children deserve to feel safe in their homes, with their families.
Too often, that is not the case. The Department of Health and Welfare receives nearly 23,000 reports of child abuse, neglect, and abandonment each year in Idaho.
With about 80 million dogs living in U.S. households, there are unfortunately about 4.5 million dog bites each year, with many dog bite victims being children.
In Idaho, dog bites are increasing, and visits to Idaho emergency departments by children for dog bite injuries are
Can you imagine a place that offers services to stabilize people in a behavioral health crisis as well as treatment for those with serious and complex mental illnesses and substance use disorders? A place that serves everyone -- regardless of age, where they live, or their
A total of 153,837 Idaho residents are in Medicaid Protection, which means they couldn’t be removed from Medicaid during the pandemic unless they died, moved out of state, or asked to be removed based on federal law. Since Congress removed that protection, DHW has been working