Input needed on possible county public health department

Published Thursday, April 24, 2008

By Mandy Bourgeois

While Wise County is one of many counties in Texas without a public health department, a group of citizens is looking to change that.

Wise County is in Texas' Health Service Region 2/3, which covers 49 counties in North Texas. According to the Web site, the area is larger than 17 states with a population greater than 33 states and is serviced by staff located in three offices - the main office in Arlington and sub-offices in Wichita Falls and Abilene.

"Decatur has the only registered sanitarian in the county," said Decatur Mayor Joe Lambert, who serves as co-chair for the Public Health Forum Study Committee with Bridgeport Mayor Don Majka. "Everybody else has to rely on the state for their health and food inspections. The state doesn't usually respond until there's a complaint."

The projected population growth helped fuel the formation of the Public Health Forum Study Committee, which began passing out surveys last week seeking the public's input on the need for a county Public Health Department.

The Public Health Forum Study Committee was born out of multiple discussions on the subject of a county Public Health Department in Wise County Health Group meetings.

"Historically, in Wise County, like other rural counties, if there was a health department in the county, it was run by the state. There's never been a county funded and managed office that reports just to the commissioners and people of Wise County. It's always been a state office," said Martin Woodruff, member of both the Public Health Forum Study Committee and the Wise County Health Group. "What we have now, instead of having a local office, is a regional office with staff people assigned to cover multiple counties. There's not really anybody on site coordinating public health functions."

Woodruff said that the results of the survey will help the study committee decide if the timing is right for the county to add a public health department.

"Is it time for Wise County, at this point? Since we're facing nothing but growth for the foreseeable future, could we be better served if we went ahead and created a public health office?" Woodruff said, adding that it would be beneficial to get a department up and running before the population "gets to 100,000-plus people."

The survey lists six issues to be ranked as most important to least important, including:

- Sanitarian position - food service inspection

- Coordination and development of disaster contingency plans, such as pandemic flu planning and bio-terrorism plans

- Environmental health issues - streamlining the process of septic permitting

- Coordination of child inoculation programs' information - fees and locations

- Health programs/issues -prevention, education and awareness

- Public health assessments - keeping accurate data; a conduit to the state

"If we had a public health office, these are some of the issues that they could address that we could think of," Woodruff said. "A public health official may come in and introduce us to other things. These are the things that came to our attention that could be addressed right now. It's not a highly controlled survey - we're just getting an idea of interest on this topic by those in the county."

Members of the committee are handing out the surveys and they will also be available at the health fair scheduled from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, May 3 at the Decatur Civic Center.

The surveys are to be returned to the Wise County judge's office, and the committee plans to discuss the results next month.

"We want to get an idea from the people who we survey what they feel to be important, as far as what a public health director would deal with," Lambert said. "We want to see what's important to the people."

"I think it's very much needed in this county. We're going to be faced with a lot of issues in the next 25 years. People moving to Wise County come with a level of expectations and expect that services will be provided," Lambert said. "It's proactive and preventative to provide better health services to our citizens."