Approved Minutes of March 26, 2025

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MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF HEALTH March 26, 2025 retailers" were retailers who had failed a compliance check and were considered "problem retailers" who were likely to sell to minors or fail to appropriately check ID. • The outgoing Surgeon General released a report at the beginning of the year outlining the link between alcohol consumption and cancer risk and stating that there is no safe amount of alcohol that can be consumed without elevating cancer risk. Women experience greater risk of developing cancer from alcohol exposure compared to men, even at low to moderate rates of drinking. The Surgeon General recommended updating the alcohol warning labels to reflect this new awareness of associated cancer risk. • Legalization of cannabis is most likely coming, and Ms. Luu underscored the importance of good policy. Commissioner Fowler noted that when she contacted mayors about updating their municipal Unified Development Ordinances (UDOs) to restrict the opening of vape shops within certain distances of schools, parks, and residential areas she got some pushback which she believes may have been because there are concerns about instead shunting these shops into lower income areas and increasing justice- involvement of already marginalized individuals. Ms. Luu said that she recommends applying a harm-reduction lens to this issue —the importance is in promoting safer sales as much as possible. She added that currently, there is no regulation and no state guidance, no age limits set or enforced in NC, and that products being sold are often not congruent with what is on the labels, so protective policy is necessary. • Ms. Luu shared some health equity highlights, including increasing language access to programming and arrest deflection/diversion programs. She reminded the board that pursuing environmental-level change is the best way to impact the largest number of people. • In response to Dr. Crandell's question, Ms. Luu explained that opioids and cannabis are two other substances of concern. One harm-reduction strategy is to make naloxone easily accessible in bars, house parties, and local retailers; Ms. Luu shared that CCC has also been pairing the responsible server trainings with bystander intervention trainings, and that she wants to add naloxone training. • Dr. Nickelson asked about mobile IDs (i.e., IDs that can be displayed on a smartphone screen) to which Ms. Luu explained that, while the idea behind them is to allow people to always have their ID on them as most people always have their phone with them, they ultimately present an issue for enforcement, as the technology to verify them is prohibitively expensive and really only accessible to organizations like TSA. Dr. Jonnal arrived during this time. VIII. Actions Items A. Health Department Strategic Plan Ms. Stewart presented the updates to the Strategic Plan since its initial presentation to the board at the Board Retreat on March 15t", 2025. Specifically, the organizational chart was revised based on the board's feedback. In response to Dr. Royce's question about further feedback, Ms. Stewart assured her that she considers a strategic plan to be a living document, so it can always be revised. Dr. Royce applauded the goal of collecting more data, and Ms. Stewart shared that efforts are already underway to address data access issues. S:\Managers Working Files\BOH\Agendas &Abstracts\2025 Agenda and Abstracts/ March Page 7