Director of new Iowa Dept. of Health and Human Services says merger closes gaps

(Des Moines, IA) — The director of the newly merged Iowa Department of Health and Human Services says the merger closes gaps in programs that were managed by two separate agencies. Iowa H-H-S director Kelly Garcia now oversees a full-time staff of 45-hundred and about thousand private contractors who work on state programs. Garcia was hired to lead the Iowa Department of Human Services in the fall of 2019. She was named acting director of the Iowa Department of Public Health in mid-2020, and those two agencies merged July First. Garcia and her staff are now working on a plan to bring the Department on Aging into the agency.