The NH Health Alert Network (NH HAN) system is a 24/7/365 comprehensive system for public health emergency communications, including notifications and alerts. It is a network of individuals involved in the creation of communications and response to communications around public health emergencies, as well as several hardware and software systems used for these communications.

The network ensures that public health professionals and key response partners have relevant and timely access to information, including information necessary to respond to events that may have urgent public health consequences.  HAN messages are sent to individuals who meet at least one of the following criteria:

• The recipient has a legal obligation to respond to a public health incident.
• A public health incident is occurring in the recipient's jurisdictional area.
• The recipient's participation is essential for completing a public health intervention.

The HAN messages are sent through New Hampshire's primary communication alerting system called the Communicator!NXT which rapidly pushes out health alerts via telephone, fax, e-mail and pager. In addition to sending out time-sensitive Health Alert messages, DPHS is sending Healthy Insights messages that are focused on disease prevention/health promotion news for the medical community of New Hampshire.  Each issue features one topic, relevant for NH, and provides local data on that topic as well as short guidelines with useful links and/or materials for providers to use.

The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Public Health Services was awarded Public Health Information Network (PHIN) Certification in Direct Alerting on June 11, 2009. Achieving this certification demonstrates New Hampshire’s commitment to implement PHIN standards and practices that improve its overall capacity to exchange electronic public health information across jurisdictional lines—a benefit during both emergency and day-to-day operations.

For more information on receiving Health Alerts or Healthy Insights, contact the NH HAN Coordinator at Health.Alert@nh.gov.