Arkansas Department Of Health

Arkansas Department Of Health, a U.S. state government entity headquartered in Little Rock, operates as a prime recipient on federal contracts and grants delivering public health regulatory inspection, disease surveillance, vital statistics, and maternal and child health services to civilian federal agencies without set-asides. The agency holds no federal contract vehicles and does not compete for contracts; it receives definitive contracts, purchase orders, and delivery orders, along with substantial grant awards, based on its statutory role as Arkansas's centralized public health authority.

Arkansas Department Of Health's federal customer base is highly concentrated and grant-heavy. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (72 awards), the Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service (80 awards), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (54 awards), and the Health Resources and Services Administration (48 awards) anchor the top recipients by volume. CDC Pittsburgh specifically carries 38 awards valued at $44.3 million combined potential value, and the Social Security Administration holds 37 awards valued at $6.7 million, reflecting established relationships for National Death Index maintenance, electronic death records processing, enumeration-at-birth services, and disease surveillance programs. The agency's awards span 58 federal customer agencies, with the top five accounting for 39 percent of the 755 total awards in the source data.

The agency's recent prime contract work is concentrated in regulatory inspection and specialized health services. Representative contracts include a $313,626 definitive contract from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) awarded September 30, 2026, for human food inspections in Arkansas through September 2031; a $488,944 definitive contract from FDA awarded August 2022 for Mammography Quality Standards Act inspections through August 2027; a $791,243 definitive contract from the Health Resources and Services Administration for Hansen's disease outpatient services through September 2028; and recurring CDC purchase orders and delivery orders for National Death Index maintenance and Vaccine Safety Capacity Planning (NCHS VSCP), with an underlying indefinite delivery contract ceiling of $3.22 million running through April 2027. The agency also holds delivery orders under HHS Basic Ordering Agreement HHSD200201250802I and Social Security Administration indefinite delivery contracts, with 11 and 8 task orders respectively representing recurring vital statistics and enumeration work.

Arkansas Department Of Health's grant portfolio is dominated by formula and block grants from USDA, HHS, and CDC for WIC program administration and food expenses, preventive health services, maternal and child health block grants, and disease prevention and surveillance. Recent major grant awards include $60.3 million from USDA Food and Nutrition Service (October 2025) for WIC food expenses, $26.8 million for WIC administrative expenses, $18.5 million from HHS Health Resources and Services Administration (October 2025) for Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grants, $18.9 million from HHS for Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV), $2 million from EPA Region 6 for Public Water System Supervision, and approximately $1.5 million from CDC for Preventive Health and Health Services Block Grants. The agency also holds cooperative agreements from CDC for vaccine-preventable disease prevention and response, tuberculosis elimination, HIV surveillance and prevention, epidemiology and laboratory capacity for infectious diseases, and emergency preparedness and healthcare preparedness programs, with awards running through 2030 and supporting core public health surveillance and infrastructure.

Activity has fluctuated year to year (25 awards in 2022, 35 in 2023, 26 in 2024, 21 in 2025, and 5 in 2026 as of late September), reflecting the cyclical nature of formula grant awards and contract renewals. Within the next twenty-four months, 38 awards with combined potential value of $2 million face ultimate completion, creating near-term recompete and renewal risk on contract IDVs and non-competing continuation decisions on grants. The agency operates almost entirely as a prime (98 percent of awards) with minimal subcontractor engagement; sub-recipient relationships flow downstream to local health units, non-profits, and academic partners like the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences on grant work related to health promotion research and disease surveillance. Service Contract Inventory data for the agency shows minimal federal service-contract reporting ($248 thousand across FY2022–FY2023 only, with roughly 0.1 FTEs recorded), indicating that the agency's federal work is predominantly captured outside SCI reporting thresholds—typical of state government delivering regulatory and public health operations at firm fixed pricing rather than time-and-materials staffing contracts.