After working through COVID and controversy, Idaho Health and Welfare director to retire
The director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare is retiring after a tenure marked by a global pandemic and conflict with other officials.
Gov. Brad Little said in a press release that Dave Jeppesen will make his exit at the end of the year.
“Dave Jeppesen promised me two to four years in this position, and I am grateful he gave us five,” Little said.
The governor announced that Idaho Department of Insurance Director Dean Cameron would be interim director beginning in 2024. Cameron previously served in the Idaho Senate for 25 years.
“The department and its valuable employees work tirelessly to carry out a significant mission — to strengthen the health, safety, and independence of Idahoans,” Jeppesen said in the release. “I know I leave the agency in good hands with Dean Cameron.”
Jeppesen was one of the people at the center of Idaho’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic that began in early 2020, setting crisis standards and leading press conferences.
More recently, he’s faced pushback after an Idaho Legislative Services Office audit investigated the department’s distribution of $72 million in federal child care grants.
The grant program has been the center of a legal battle between the health department and Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, the Idaho Statesman previously reported. Jeppesen and other department officials petitioned courts in March to stop the attorney general’s investigation. A judge ruled in August that Labrador had a “notable conflict of interest” when his office began investigating officials over the grants, and ordered the AG’s office to appoint a special prosecutor to the case.
Lawmakers had dictated that the federal funding go to programs serving children 5 to 13 years of age. State health officials failed to follow those instructions, according to a 55-page audit report. The Idaho Legislative Services Office found that nearly 30% of grant applicants planned to use the funds on programs that served children outside that age range.
Jeppesen rejected the audit’s findings, saying the department would “meet any review, audit or investigation with cooperation because we stand by our work.”
As director, Jeppesen also became the subject of harassment by Ammon Bundy supporters when they protested a child welfare case, and Jeppesen ended up testifying against Bundy and other defendants in a July trial in which St. Luke’s and other plaintiffs were awarded tens of millions of dollars in damages.
Little highlighted some of the director’s accomplishments in the announcement, pointing out the ways he advanced “historic new behavioral health resources in the state as co-chair of the new three-branch Idaho Behavioral Health Council. During Jeppesen’s time there, the agency implemented the Idaho 988 suicide and crisis lifeline, stood up four youth crisis centers, started five certified community behavioral health centers, and created a recovery coaching academy.”
Jeppesen, whose background was in marketing at Blue Cross of Idaho and in the banking industry prior to his appointment by Little in January 2019, was especially focused on improving state-run hospitals, including a new psychiatric hospital for those young than 18, the released said.
“On his watch, Idaho created more than 85 new beds that will be available in the next 12 months for youth in crisis when the state previously had no in-state psychiatric residential treatment centers for youth,” Little said.
The governor said he would begin the process of recruiting a new permanent director in the spring.
“Serving as DHW director has been the greatest honor of my career, and hands down my favorite job,” Jeppesen said in the release. “I am grateful to Gov. Little and the people of Idaho for entrusting me with such an important role.”
This story was originally published November 15, 2023 at 5:16 PM.
