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HomeMy WebLinkAboutPHAB 03-07-23 minutes Deschutes County Health Services Public Health Advisory Board (PHAB) MINUTES MINUTES March 7, 2023 12:00 – 1:30pm Facilitator Rob Ross, MD, PHAB Chair Staff Coordinator Tom Kuhn, Community Health Manager Scribe Aimee Burroughs Next Meeting April 4, 2023 Topic and Lead Introductions 5 minutes – Rob Ross & Tom Kuhn Approval of January Minutes (need 5 for quorum) 5 minutes Motioned by Colleen Sinsky and seconded by Tami Pike. Announcements and Unfinished Business  Any Group updates?  PH Director Introduction Heather Kaisner is our new PH director after working for DC and leaving for OHA for a few years. Colleen asked what her priorities were in this role and heather answered that COVID recovery is a priority and wants to make sure we don’t go back to how things were. She wants to listen and get feedback.  Legislative update o Tom is tracking bills 5525; bill 2773 tries to increase recruitment and retention of PH employees; bill 3090 ban on flavored Vape products. He is waiting on work sessions for these bills to attend. He will be coming back to PHAB for letters of support for these bills. o Commissioner Chang brought up that the deadline is coming up if there needs to be a hearing or the bill will be dead. Mentioned we might need to advocate for a hearing before the March deadline. Central Oregon Regional Health Assessment (RHA) Update Laura Hart, Public Health Management Analyst “To promote and protect the health and safety of our community.” Updated 1/30/24 Goal of the RHA is to provide detailed picture of our community’s health and what determines that. See graphics to get a bigger picture of what is required and where we get that information. We are using different means of getting this information. One way we get information that can’t be obtained from other ways is using a survey and listening sessions. Community Health survey was created in spring of 2022 and the outreach plan was stunted due to staffing issues. After feedback about initial survey being too lengthy and didn’t use plain language, it was relaunched in March 2023. A communications toolkit will be helpful and an outside firm has been brought in to help push social media, posters, and other ways to create awareness and encourage community voice. Survey created by COHC, St. Charles, DCHS, Jefferson and Crook county. Simple timeline, see slides. Creating listening sessions, outreach and other incentives for people to take the survey. Commissioner Chang asked what this assessment does, what are the impacts? Laura answered that the RHA informs regional health improvement plan to then focus funding and support that. Chang asked for examples and Carmen answered that in COHC 101 gets launched it will answer those questions. And COHC has invested 12million dollars into the scope of the work RHA from 2020-2024. Carmen shared this is the first time we have done a community survey and then we can look at our regions priorities and then create the RIP from that. Dr Gross added that the RHA and then created the RHIP; direct examples are hiring DC employee to support immunization across the county. Sarah added that there are advisor groups that operationalize things as well. And that she used the RHA/RHIP to help in grant writing. Also has resulted in partnerships. Link to Community Survey https://www.research.net/r/CentralOregon2023 Emergency Preparedness & COVID-19 Recovery Program Emily Horton, DCHS Program Manager Newer DC program. How things are changing and what our plans are moving forward and what that might mean for the community. Still having regular vaccine clinics and doing lots of work in houseless communities, resources are decreasing. Trying to take lessons learned from community partnerships and leveraging how we work together as a community in moving forward. Trying to get medical reserve corp established for the community; still a work in progress. Meeting regularly to see how we can support the community in response to Covid and moving forward. Capitalizing on relationships made and how that can be utilized in emergency preparedness model. Staffing is an issue, losing staff every few months due to funding. Excited to have this team on board because Covid showed us gaps in our infrastructure to serve the community; now we have this increased capacity to serve the community. Trying to engage BH and PH we need to move forward and continue to be prepared as much as we can. Dr. Ross said the silver lining is an incredible coalition in the community who did a lot of important work. Heather is really excited about this team being developed and take the lessons we’ve learned over the years. Shouted out this team and said that at OHA that DC was the model of working in collaboration and having that community before the emergency and working through those lulls to keep relationships stable. There are endless amounts of projects that we can establish and work through with funding. Move forward without forgetting there are lots of Covid things to deal with and address. “To promote and protect the health and safety of our community.” Updated 1/30/24 Commissioner Chang asked about possible surge in demand of Covid vaccines in the Fall and if Emily had a prediction about that. Emily stated that as far as our variants, we will see a bump in the Fall and then a plateau; no serious variants out there that we haven’t seen yet here; outbreaks are showing a plateau right now. Thought there might be a bivalent booster, but doesn’t look like that will happen in the next few months. What this team is planning for is fall Covid/flu high demand for vaccine. Won’t have unlimited supply of Covid vaccines and getting it to the people who are in the most need and who have trouble getting it. Dr. Ross asked what the overall uptake on the bivalent vaccine because it hasn’t struck a cord with the population. Emily said in DC we are at 26% of eligible people for the bivalent booster, st most people who had the 1 one are wanting the second one. A lot of people don’t know it exists; doing outreach and education on that availability of that booster. Not a big demand but offering it while we can to those who want it. Heather added that it will be interesting after the emergency is over in May and vaccine moves back to private sector. What will happen to vaccines for adults which has always been underfunded and see what happens at a federal level. PHAB Reset Tom Kuhn  New Chair and Vice Chair Chair: Dr. Ross, Vice Chair: Colleen Sinsky  Recruitments 4 potential members have interviews soon; Tom will try and expedite that process 9-15 members is required so we will have 12 after this Ruth asked about Jane McGuire and wanted to pass along her information to Tom  Meeting Cadence Proposal We had discussed doing a hybrid model for meetings and catering is too expensive if people don’t show. He suggested going to in-person every other month Colleen added that hybrid are difficult. Supports not doing hybrid. Ruth and Tami suggested doing maybe every other or 1 a quarter and that there needed to be more time to eat and socialize. Sarah agreed.  Priorities – Where do we go from here? Work group has met a few times. Sarah would like to see the priorities again and wants to see how they line up with programs that PH is already working on. For this year to see the priority areas and making sure it supports what the health department is doing. Aimee Snyder could do a presentation about PH funding. Next step; the smaller committee could reconvene and decide if we need to inform the priority data or if we just have more awareness. One thing that stood out was Youth Suicide and is a big issue locally. Do we consider this more of a priority? Carmen said a lot of them line up with work groups at COHC and wants to see how the work there could integrate with DC and COHC. Colleen was also thinking that it overlaps with COHC operational committee. Sarah asked what PHAB was made for? And asked if the board is created to help the Health Department; it’s not always PHAB guiding us but giving feedback to HS programs. PHAB also provides guidance to the commissioners on topics for them to consider. The “To promote and protect the health and safety of our community.” Updated 1/30/24 houselessness documents. The role of the PHAB is shown in the bylaws. Commissioner Chang shared that one of Dave’s frustrations was that PHAB didn’t have impact on the board of commissioners and he shared that frustration. He is open to brainstorming and has an open door on that. Carmen asked if PHAB gathers to advocate to provide testimony to the commissioners. We were moving in that direction but with Covid that derailed us. We now have opportunities to do that. Could be sharing information or other things. When the RHA is completed, the top 3 points could be shared with the BOCC. Commissioner Chang’s recommendation for members of the PHAB or chair and vice chair send a letter to ask to come present on a topic. Better received by BOCC if brought to their attention by community. Tom suggested a meet and greet with BOCC and bring up topics that are important and we could also t-it up for the PH proposed budget if we did this in the next month. Ruth added that he is astounded that there is not a Ryan White clinic here. He expressed his dissatisfaction with the Ryan White program here. Tom will re-establish the work group and send an email Adjourn 1:30pm In Attendance: Tom Kuhn Laura Hart Sharity Ludwig Erin Fitzpatrick Carmen Madrid Rob Ross Logan Clausen Colleen Sinsky Peter Boehm Sarah Baron Heather Kaisner Phil Chang Tami Pike Ruth Vernotico Emily Horton “To promote and protect the health and safety of our community.” Updated 1/30/24