Why Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health

When our staff and Health Board in the past year began discussions about the department’s branding, we focused on speaking to the community about the promise our organization makes. 

Our brand supports the  mission to advance policies, practices and programs that promote health for all, prevent disease and protect the environment. To advance this mission, our brand’s promise seeks to focus on collaborative engagement and actions that directly influence the social determinants of health in our community. This includes serving as a steward to the Douglas County Community Health Plan developed with input from so many community partners and stakeholders and on a foundation of seeking to achieve health equity.  

To us, this promise illustrates so much more than can be confined into four walls of a building. This idea of “Advancing Health for All” is connected to our future story outline in our Strategic Plan: 

• Advance health equity in all we do.  
• Be informed and influenced by the needs and aspirations of the community.  
• Be a community health strategist.  
• Work together towards the common good. 

As we seek to communicate this work, it fits in line with the definition that national leaders in our field define public health as “what we do together as a society to ensure the conditions in which everyone can be healthy.” 

For these reasons, we are changing our name to Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health to create a better fit for the work we do in our community and on the determinants of health for everyone no matter the conditions they face.