Office of the Commissioner

​​​The Kentucky Department for Public Health (DPH) develops, monitors and operates public health programs and activities designed to improve the lives of residents and visitors through injury, sickness and disease prevention, promotion of healthy lifestyles and health protection efforts. 

DPH supervises and assists local boards of health and 61 local health departments serving all 120 Kentucky counties. The department relies on local health departments to carry out core public health activities required by statute or regulation and to provide preventive services to specific populations mandated by budget appropriations. 

DPH has identified the following seven core public health services that are required at the local level, either through local health departments or by another provider:  

  • Enforcement of public health regulations
  • Surveillance of public health
  • Communicable disease control
  • Public health education
  • Public health policy development
  • Reduction of risk to families and children
  • Disaster preparedness ​

Programs and Services

Steven J. Stack, MD, MBA, FACEP

Commissioner, Kentucky Department for Public Health
Commonwealth of Kentucky​

Com. Stack portrait

Steven J. Stack, MD, MBA, FACEP serves as Commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Public Health and Chief Medical Officer for the Commonwealth of Kentucky since February 2020. He is also immediate past president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) and a board-certified emergency physician.

For more than 20 years, Dr. Stack has been a leader in the medical profession. He has served on boards of directors and in senior leadership roles for numerous non-profit medical and other health sector associations. In 2006, he was the first emergency physician ever elected to the American Medical Association (AMA) board of trustees, subsequently serving as both board chair and as the AMA's youngest president since 1854.

Dr. Stack has led as medical director of multiple emergency departments, including St. Joseph East (Lexington), St. Joseph Mt. Sterling (rural eastern Kentucky), and Baptist Memorial Hospital (Memphis, Tenn.). He has more than 20 years of emergency medicine administrative and clinical practice experience in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee.

In 2018, Dr. Stack joined The University of Tennessee Haslam College of Business as adjunct professor. In this role, he lectures on government, healthcare policy, and the mechanics of advocacy to physicians in the Physician Executive MBA (PEMBA) program as well as to other healthcare leaders enrolled in executive education programs.

Dr. Stack is a nationally recognized advocate who bridges clinical care with governmental policy. He has served on numerous federal advisory committees for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) from 2010 - 2016.

Additionally, he served from 2012 - 2016 as board member and secretary of eHealth Initiative, a Washington, DC-based non-profit association improving health care through the advancement of health IT. Other areas of expertise include emergency department and hospital management, health system reform, physician licensure and regulation, and health sector regulation.

Dr. Stack has extensive experience in legislative and executive branch policymaking, advocacy, and litigation at the federal, state, and county levels. He is also a skilled public spokesperson, crisis communicator, and longtime advocate for universal access to affordable and high quality healthcare.

Born and raised in Cleveland, Dr. Stack graduated magna cum laude from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., where he was a Henry Bean Scholar for classical studies. He then returned to Ohio to complete medical school and emergency medicine residency at The Ohio State University before moving to Memphis to begin his clinical practice. In 2006, Dr. Stack and his family relocated to Lexington. In December 2017, he completed his MBA at UT Knoxville Haslam College of Business.

Dr. Stack is married and the father of one daughter. His wife, Tracie, is an MD, PhD and practicing board-certified allergy/asthma/ immunology specialist. In his leisure time, Dr. Stack enjoys the study of classical Greek and Roman history, United States presidential history, photography, and traveling with his wife and daughter.


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