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Health Director’s Report June, 2015 • Staff o Personal Health Services continues to interview and hire nurses and clinic managers. We are pleased by the caliber of applicants for these positions and excited about our latest round of new hires. o Dental is interviewing for their new Dental Team (Dentist, Dental Assistant and Office Assistant). All will be hired and start no later than July 6th. o All other Divisions are fully staffed. • Board of Health Priorities o The Family Success Alliance is the lead entity for a United Way collaborative. This year the United Way changed their funding process from funding “agencies” to funding collective impact work. This is an important change and I have seen it work tremendously well in other parts of the country. Like a lot of major change, however, it is difficult and uncertain and adds one more layer of complexity to our work of building the FSA pipeline. We will spend the summer working with our collaborative of non-profit agencies and others to determine the best way to use the $168,000 from the United Way and the other funds we have available. o We had an intriguing meeting with a group of UNC Chapel Hill researchers and representatives from the Provost’s office. The Provost is looking for a way for the University to be involved in addressing the issues of children living in poverty. The FSA has a lot of data, evaluation and other research needs we believe could be met well by the University as well as a comprehensive project that meets many of the criteria the Provost delineated. We should hear something later this summer. o We also had an interesting meeting with the national group that is responsible for coordinating the evaluation of all Promise Neighborhood initiatives across the nation. We identified some potential areas of intersect (including using the same evaluation measures, participating in learning collaboratives and potentially being able to utilize their evaluation software system). We will have another meeting with them in a few weeks to really hone in on what they can share with us. o The FSA Navigators are hired and the kindergarten jump start programs are rolling out in July. More great and speedy work from our FSA Team! • Various o For the first time since Ebola emerged on the scene, Orange County is not monitoring anybody. We don’t expect that to last, but it is a nice break. We did receive some funds from the state to cover the cost of planning and monitoring for the next fiscal year (not retroactively, however), so that will allow us to hire a temporary nurse to take some of the pressure off our CD nurses. o I was asked by the County Manager to participate on a panel to interview potential candidates for the County Finance Director/CFO. We interviewed 8 people and recommended two extremely qualified candidates for her further consideration. o Through some friendly teasing and feather fluffing via social media, we have decided to challenge Durham County Health Department to a walking competition. We’ll have more details in August, but we will see who can walk the length of the Appalachian Trail the quickest. The Durham Health Director and I are still working out our friendly wagers. o I am excited to announce that the ABC Board funded our grant request for $30,000. We asked for $40,000, but are still super excited about this project. We will combine $30,000 from the Health Department, the Town of Chapel Hill and the University with this grant and use the $120,000 plus some in-kind support to hire a project manager to implement the 21 recommendations from the Town and Gown Alcohol Task Force. o I’ve also been asked by the School of Public Health to re-design and teach a Master’s-level course, Spring Semester 2016. Both Susan and Liska have approved this outside employment as we all recognize this as a great opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the SPH and the Health Department. o Other items that kept me busy this month were:  Serving (again) as a member of the 3 person Orange County Personnel Hearing Board (where an employee can appeal the county’s decision to terminate them). We have another hearing scheduled in July.