Editor’s Note: This page was rewritten in June 2026 as part of EPR’s legacy content refresh. Originally published January 2018 as a repost of a Philadelphia Department of Public Health media RFP. The URL has been rebuilt as a canonical reference on PDPH’s communications operation across the opioid crisis, COVID-19, and the 2026 environment. Original publish date preserved.
The Philadelphia Department of Public Health is the municipal public-health authority for the sixth-largest U.S. city. Its communications operation runs across an opioid crisis that has killed more Philadelphians than any other public-health challenge in modern city history, a COVID-19 response that defined the agency’s 2020–2022 period, and a maternal and child health portfolio that is among the most active in U.S. municipal public health.
The Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH) is responsible for protecting the health of approximately 1.55 million Philadelphia residents. The department operates through 16 divisions covering disease control, ambulatory health services, environmental health, the Public Health Laboratory, the AIDS Activity Coordinating Office, the Opioid Prevention Program, Maternal Child and Family Health, and others. PDPH operates the city’s Federally Qualified Health Center network — the safety-net primary care system — serving residents without other access to healthcare.
The Kensington Opioid Crisis
The single most consequential public-health communications challenge facing PDPH for the past decade has been the opioid crisis concentrated in Kensington, the North Philadelphia neighborhood that became the open-air drug market of the city by the mid-2010s. The crisis evolved through multiple phases: the initial OxyContin and prescription opioid crisis of the 2000s, the heroin wave of the early 2010s, the fentanyl wave from the mid-2010s onward, and the xylazine (“tranq”) wave that came to public attention around 2022.
Philadelphia has had the highest fentanyl-related overdose death rate of any major U.S. city for multiple consecutive years. The annual overdose death count exceeded 1,400 in 2022. PDPH’s communications operation has had to navigate the public-health response (harm reduction, naloxone distribution, treatment access), the political environment (federal raids on Kensington, the proposed safe injection facility that was litigated through federal courts), and the broader civic narrative about the city itself, which has become inextricable from the Kensington crisis in national media coverage.
The communications discipline required has been unusual for U.S. municipal public-health work. PDPH has had to communicate harm reduction policies to a constituency that includes substance users, families of substance users, neighborhood residents affected by the open-air market, and the broader Philadelphia public that votes on the elected officials who set municipal policy. The communications architecture is multi-audience by structural necessity.
The COVID-19 Period
PDPH’s COVID-19 response from March 2020 through the lifting of the federal public-health emergency in May 2023 was one of the most sustained public-health communications operations in U.S. municipal history. The department’s public communications operation expanded substantially during the pandemic period — daily case-count updates, vaccination campaign communications, school-reopening communications, masking-policy communications, and outbreak-response communications across schools, workplaces, and congregate-living settings.
Dr. Thomas Farley, who served as Health Commissioner from 2016 to May 2021, was the public face of PDPH’s pandemic response through most of the acute period. His successor, Dr. Cheryl Bettigole, who served from May 2021 to early 2024, oversaw the transition out of the acute pandemic period and managed the longer-tail communications work around long COVID, the bivalent and updated COVID vaccines, and the broader public-health communications environment shifts that followed the acute pandemic.
Maternal and Child Health
PDPH’s Maternal Child and Family Health division runs one of the most active municipal maternal health communications operations in the U.S. Philadelphia’s infant mortality rate has historically been elevated compared to national averages and disproportionately affects Black mothers and infants. The department’s communications operation runs sustained campaigns around safe sleep practices (the safe-sleeping messaging that the 2018 RFP specifically named), prenatal care access, breastfeeding support, and the broader maternal mortality crisis.
The safe-sleep communications work specifically requires multi-language production for Philadelphia’s diverse population — Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Arabic, Haitian Creole, and other languages depending on the neighborhood. PDPH’s communications operation maintains multi-language production capacity either internally or through procurement arrangements with translation and culturally-specific communications agencies.
The Environmental Health Communications Function
PDPH’s Air Management Services and Environmental Health Services divisions run environmental health communications — air quality alerts, water quality communications, lead in housing, food safety, and emerging environmental health concerns. Philadelphia has significant legacy environmental health issues from its industrial history, and PDPH’s communications work on lead in particular has been sustained and operationally complex.
The Lead and Healthy Homes division coordinates with the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections and with the Philadelphia Housing Authority on lead-paint and lead-pipe communications. Childhood blood lead levels in Philadelphia have been elevated compared to national averages, and PDPH’s communications operation runs continuous campaigns around lead testing, lead remediation, and the safety practices families can adopt in lead-affected housing.
The Communications Procurement Pattern
The 2018 RFP that originally anchored this URL was structured around the campaign-and-project model that PDPH continues to use. The department procures communications services for specific campaigns — opioid harm reduction, vaccination drives, safe sleep, smoking cessation, environmental health alerts — rather than retaining a single agency of record across all communications work. The structure produces multiple smaller contracts with agencies specialized in specific public-health communications domains.
The agencies that compete for PDPH work typically combine three competencies: public-health communications experience, multi-language and culturally-specific Philadelphia-neighborhood communications capability, and behavior-change campaign measurement discipline. Philadelphia’s competitive bidding requirements under the city’s eContract Philly procurement system govern the agency selection process.
The Operating Environment in 2026
PDPH in 2026 operates in a different communications environment than it did in 2018. The opioid crisis remains the dominant single public-health challenge but has evolved through xylazine and now into broader synthetic-stimulant adulteration. COVID-19 is no longer an acute emergency but the longer-tail communications work around vaccination, post-COVID conditions, and trust in public-health communications continues. Maternal and child health remains a sustained operational priority. Environmental health work continues across lead, air quality, and the long-term water-quality communications challenges Philadelphia faces.
The department’s communications operation is one of the largest municipal public-health communications operations in the United States and operates as a reference model for other large-city public-health departments. The architecture — campaign-procured, multi-language, behavior-change-measured, multi-audience — is the operating model that other U.S. cities studying municipal public-health communications increasingly emulate.
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