Agenda 04-01-2004 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Attachment 2: Joint BOH/BOCC 04/01/04 • Birth and death certificate registration verification (in a five day time period) as specified by general statute • A communicable disease program that includes communicable disease surveillance and follow -up, TB control, TB medical consultation, direct clinical services for the diagnosis and treatment of STI, HIV counseling and testing, case management services for HIV and chronic STI clients, and community outreach and education services • Immunization tracking services • Restaurant and institutional inspection services • On -site wastewater permitting and monitoring services And so forth. ➢ Without the clarity around what services or program areas are REQUIRED, the recommendations are not coherent and are subject to being individually "dropped" as non - essential. A Public Health Improvement Plan may vary from one five or ten year period to another depending on what health status data shows, but the CORE services should remain the same to safeguard general public health. Workforce Development Recommendations 5 and 6: Workforce Development The racial diversity of environmental health staff across NC is woeful. An evaluation of pay scales is not mentioned specifically and it should be part of the overall assessment in this area. Recruitment is a much more complex issue than that detailed in this document. The "lack of clarity about what public health does" statement may (or may not) be true but offers little to the overall myriad of reasons for this problem. Structure & Organization Recommendation 7: Regional Incubators The "incubators" initiative is interesting on the surface but hints of being someone's pet project thrown into the mix for consideration. It is a huge leap of faith to expect that they will self - sustain based on user fees. This is a "hidden" drive for regionalization. There are a few core services that would likely be able to be provided efficiently on a regional basis, especially in those areas with sparse geographical populations. Recommendation 8: Location of environmental health. There is an inference in Recommendation 8 that service delivery at the local level is impeded or otherwise poor because of where environmental health is housed at the state level. This is erroneous and should be corrected before this document moves forward. Environmental staff in the Orange County Health Department have worked under both structural paradigms and have not realized any significant advantage or disadvantage to either. The structure illustrates the disconnect between health and environmental at all levels (national, state and local), but in no way should environmental health services at the Page 2 LAROSIMB014\0404 Joint Boc -Boh mtg\Attach 2 0304 BOH Public Health Task Force 2004 Recommendations.doc