Administration - Cerro Gordo County Department of Public Health

Administration

Cerro Gordo County Board of Health

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Present:
Mark Johnson, MD, Chairman
Barb Kellogg, Secretary
Pat Galasso (via phone conference)
Phil Dougherty

Absent: Candi Schickel, Vice Chair

Staff:
Ron Osterholm, Health Director
Linda Read, RN, BSN, Service Manager, Family & Community Health Service
Dorene Christensen, MBA, Finance Manager
Brian Hanft , REHS, MPA, Environmental Health Service Manager
Karen Crimmings, RN, Disease Prevention and Investigation Service Manager
Jodi Willemsen, Public Health Preparedness Service Manager
Tammy Bryant , Health Promotion & Education Service Manager
Leslie Smith, MPH, Health Planning & Development Service Manager
Michele Appelgate , Public Information Officer

Guests:
Kelly Wessels, Fox 47
Chris Wessels

The meeting was called to order at 12:26 pm.

Public Health Partnership Award:
Michele Appelgate provided a brief overview and thanks for all that Ms. Wessels from Fox 47 Television has done in cooperation with public health to help educate the residents of Cerro Gordo County about critical health issues. Dr. Johnson presented the Cerro Gordo County Department of Public Health Annual Public Health Partnership Award to Kelly Wessels of Fox 47 Television. Bryant echoed Appelgate’s remarks, stating that Kelly has been a key to our success with the tobacco coalition and the Clear Lake JEL kids.

Minutes:
Motioned by Galasso to approve the minutes of March 23, 2007, seconded by Kellogg. Motion passed.

Pandemic Influenza Progress:
Karen Crimmings updated the Board on her progress with the Pandemic Influenza educational initiative. Public education and community preparedness was the primary focus during the third quarter. Many work groups were implemented during this quarter including long-term care facilities. A work group of volunteer organizations (North Iowa Community Action, the Salvation Army and the Red Cross) was held. There were several private business work groups where the actual businesses came in, received information and discussed the continuity of operation plans. The number of businesses showing an interest was very promising. An isolation and quarantine work group consisting of public health, law enforcement, elected officials and the hospital was held to discuss pandemic flu. Emergency Management Administration (EMA) and mental health and mortuary services met together with health department staff to speak about surge capacity and other issues relating to pandemic flu.

Crimmings and Willemsen met with local schools where they were able to sit down with two separate work groups and develop a county-wide plan for all the school districts to review. If the districts choose to use it, they may present it to their boards for adoption.

Crimmings also went into the Mason City Airport and the Jefferson Bus Lines and spoke about portal entries and screening processes.

Crimmings has completed a variety of additional presentations including meeting with the Human Resource Association of North Iowa, OmniTel Communications, “Good Morning Mason City” with the Chamber of Commerce, and one evening at NIACC with the Natural Science Division.

Town hall meetings have been held in Rockwell, Ventura and Mason City. Crimmings did not feel these particular meetings were successful because of the low turnout.

Crimmings had an opportunity to go on a live forum one night with KSMQ in Austin, Minnesota. Also present at the forum were representatives from the Southern Minnesota EMA and public health departments. Crimmings reported that she felt very honored to be invited to participate.

As always, our traveling display is out among the community. Crimmings mentioned setting aside work on the plan temporarily in favor of getting more information out into the community.

Dr. Johnson stated his opinion that on-going public education activities will unfortunately become an unending or perpetual mission of the department.

Osterholm mentioned as a point of interest that Olmstead County Health Department in Rochester, Minnesota is very impressed with how far along Cerro Gordo County is compared to them. Osterholm felt this is a compliment to Crimmings, considering Olmstead County is in the Mayo Clinic area.

Kellogg suggested providing local businesses, either through the local Chamber of Commerce or other business and industry groups, information for their internal/employee newsletters. Crimmings stated both the Mason City and Clear Lake Chambers have been very helpful in getting information out and that will be an avenue she will continue to utilize.

Regarding the diabetes management side of chronic disease management, Dr. Johnson stated that current research show that working on the education side just does not work; chronic disease management activities have got to involve more accountability and be team oriented and interactive. Improvement is made when people are involved. He urged Crimmings not to think of this process as education but rather how to approach and engage people. Galasso asked that the Core Team think about some new ideas of engagement.

Public Health Preparedness Initiatives:
Jodi Willemsen updated the Board on Public Health Preparedness Initiatives.

April 2nd was Protect Iowa Health Day. Grocery cart displays were set up at three grocery stores in Mason City. These displays enabled residents of Cerro Gordo County to see what items they might put into a home emergency preparedness kit. Each store in turn gave away the contents of the shopping carts to one lucky winner per store. In order to register for the grocery cart drawing, a survey of six questions had to be completed. Willemsen distributed copies of the questionnaires and the results.

Willemsen stated they are going to try to set this display up again at Wal-Mart and in Clear Lake grocery stores.

Galasso suggested using Clear Lake’s phone service, CLTel, for a possible phone survey. If CLTel does not work out, Kellogg mentioned potentially utilizing a social issues class taught by Dr. Helen Karamitros at NIACC.

Local Public Health Agency:
Linda Read stated each year the department has to re-apply for Local Public Health Service funding that is divided up between the Homemaker-Home Care Aides, Public Health Nursing and Health Planning departments. A proposal similar to last year’s application - to use the funds for Home Care Aide personal care; Public Health Nursing home maintenance services and Health Planning for needs assessment and strategic planning has been submitted to the Iowa Department of Public Health.

We are proposing an alternative plan again to use some of our home care aide funding. We’ve had an increase in funding from Elderbridge the last few years, thus have excess in funds from the state grant which have subsequently been utilized by Public Health Nursing. This in turn cuts the use of local tax dollars for public health nursing.

There is no waiting list for Home Care services at this time.

Motioned by Kellogg to approve the Local Public Health Agency grant application, seconded by Dougherty. Motion passed.

Public Health Foundation:
Pat Galasso updated the Board on what was gleaned from the Williamson County and City Health District in Texas. Referring back to the last Board meeting with the Board of Supervisors, a question was posed to them regarding future funding for all county departments. Their response indicated that a lot depended on the county’s economic growth because they are at the top of the tax break. It’s all incumbent on organizations such as the health department who are grant driven, to be consistently working the market and searching for new sources of funding.

Galasso felt the Foundation is on-track as far as figuring out how to get the sources of funding into the county public health department. One way Texas did this was to organize a volunteer Public Health Foundation. They named the Pubic Health Foundation “Friends of Public Health”. Texas was challenged with getting needed grants due to the lack of a 501(c) 3 organization status.

Looking at the possibility of forming a Public Health Foundation, we may ask why should we do so? Doing so would allow us to accept more funding opportunities and it would be a way that the public themselves (if they had a passion for supporting public health) would be able to get a tax-write off by donating to the Foundation.

As far as Foundation costs and/or structure, there would be no employees just a volunteer staff and Board at this point. The impact this organization would have would be to help us with our funding challenges and moving forward to support public health services when tax asking will be getting tighter. Forming a foundation would slow down the prospect of asking for more tax money in the future. We would still be asking for public support from the county, but we might be able to fund some of the projects that would be a true vehicle of the foundation.

Galasso asked the Board how they felt about approaching the Board of Supervisor’s to pursue the goal of forming a foundation; letting them know what we are researching and the fact that we have not had any “stop” signs yet. Kellogg felt it is a worthwhile idea; one which would enhance our capacity to serve the community by potentially bringing in some new funding or to support some of our new initiatives.

Dr. Johnson felt we should move ahead post haste. It’s another public/private interface. To be successful on the public side in years ahead, we need to work on the private side more and more; this is one more way to accomplish that.

Dougherty asked if this is being done anywhere in Iowa or if we have a template. Our template comes from Texas and as far as anyone is aware, this is not being done in Iowa. Dougherty’s concern was with Texas, as they are not property-tax driven as Iowa is. Galasso stated we are cutting-edge as there aren't’t a lot of districts or counties who have thought about doing this but in the future, it will be necessary.

The consensus of the Board was to go to the Board of Supervisor’s with this idea and present it to them.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:17 pm.

The next meeting is scheduled for Friday, May 11, 2007 at 12:15 pm.

Respectfully Submitted,

Barb Kellogg
Secretary