Delaware County Health Department gets a launch date

The Delaware County Health Department is set to launch April 2, director Melissa Lyon announced, after the commonwealth approved its plans this week.

The county of nearly 600,000 people has long been the most populous in Pennsylvania without a health department and the only one without one in the Philadelphia region.

County officials had considered creating a health department for decades, but the idea never gained enough traction until 2019. The pandemic further delayed those plans. The health department in neighboring Chester County stepped in to help manage Delaware County’s COVID-19 response for more than a year.

Lyon, who most recently was the COVID-19 response incident commander for the Erie County Health Department, will lead the department, which will consist of 53 public health experts. It will address an array of issues, including continued pandemic response, prevention of other diseases, and health equity.

“We will have the ability to efficiently collect data that drives positive health outcomes for residents,” Lyon said Friday in a statement.

» READ MORE: Delaware County prepares to get its own health department ‘very soon’

The county has budgeted $8.5 million for the department in 2022. About half of that comes from state funding, while a quarter is from federal pandemic relief funds and another quarter is from reimbursements for services the department will provide.

Through 2024, the county plans to use more than $24 million in federal pandemic relief funds on the health department.