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History

Sullivan County Regional Health Department (SCRHD), serving a population of 156,535 with a workforce of 85, is one of six state metropolitan health
departments and is located in Northeast Tennessee. It serves the communities of Kingsport, Bristol, Bluff City, and Piney Flats within the confines of Sullivan County.
The county’s first Health Unit was started in 1928 in the Blountville Courthouse basement. In 1938, a nine-room health facility was built standing in the present Sullivan EMS HQ site, and was later incorporated into the Northeast Regional division of the Tennessee Department of Health. A satellite clinic was opened in Kingsport in 1957, now used by the Kingsport Department of Education.  In a strategic move to become more autonomous, in funding and in policy, the Sullivan County Health Department became a Metropolitan Region on July 1, 1989 with continued close partnering with the TDH. The Regional Health Departments current Blountville location opened in 1994 and the Kingsport location was moved to the corner of Wilcox and Sullivan in 2006. A third small facility houses the epidemiology and Emergency Preparedness departments.

Dr Thomas Briggs Yancy served as the Board of Health Chairman from 1931-1958. Dr. Francis Erwin, as medical director guided the Health Department through the distribution of the Polio Salk Vaccine in 1954. The current medical director, Dr. Andrew Stephen May, has served since 1998 working with the Health department team through the Emergency Preparedness changes incorporated since 2001, the advent of West Nile Virus, and currently Zika.

SCRHD began its Baldrige Performance Excellence journey in 2005 with applications to the TN Center for Performance Excellence in 2006, 2011, and 2015, and is a 2 time winner of a Level 3 Award.

SCRHD has two core Competencies:

  1. Prevention
  2. Education

Although SCRHD is not a primary care facility, it offers both therapeutic and preventive services through a goal-oriented structure of community health programs. Highly trained and diversified health professionals are SCRHD’s key delivery mechanisms.  Products and services are provided in settings ranging from the clinical environment to public forums and are divided into clinical and population-based services. SCRHD provides services to the public regardless of barriers or diversity, offering a SLIDING FEE SCALE for most services and LANGUAGE LINE for interpretation needs.

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