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Health Director’s Report April, 2016 • I attended an “invitation only” summit, hosted by the State Health Director, on improving perinatal health in North Carolina. There is a lot of energy and enthusiasm in Raleigh around improving our infant mortality statistics in the state. Unfortunately, one approach they’re using is to take money from counties with low infant mortality rates (like Orange) and redistributing it to counties with high rates. They also excluded counties with low infant mortality rates (like Orange) from being able to apply for competitive funding allocated by the General Assembly to address infant and child health. • A group of Human Service Department Directors attended a meeting with Weaver Street management to discuss their vision of eliminating hunger in Orange County. They have an awesome plan and we have pledged out help and support. For example, Environmental Health put together a document showing them the regulatory ramifications of various scenarios we had discussed so they can design their process with that in mind. • I facilitated a meeting to discuss health and safety issues at the Gateway Apartments here in Hillsborough. This complex has a long history of resident complaints about mold, sewage backups, etc. This meeting was to bring together residents and service providers such as Justice United and Legal Aid, Environmental Health and building inspections to prioritize issues to be addressed and develop a plan/timeline for addressing them. We’ll meet again to check progress but all agreed it was a great start. Coby and Alan represented our Healthy Homes Asthma project and were a great help to have in attendance. • This month has seen a lot of budget meetings/discussions. I don’t yet know what the Manager’s recommended budget for the Health Department will be, so I’ll probably send out an email once I know. • We did receive final approval from the BOCC for the Behavioral Health Clinician position you recommended at the last meeting. This position is currently posted and we’ll start interviews in the next couple weeks. The Manager’s Office was extremely helpful in finding an alternate funding source for this position. We will be using the mental health maintenance of effort funds for this project for its duration. • In an effort to improve relationships between DPH staff in Raleigh and local public health staff, we are participating in a pilot to have DPH staff shadow local health directors for a day. Dr. Lou Turner will be with me all day on the 27th and will also attend our Board meeting.