The mission of the county’s health services department has evolved dramatically since the days when it operated the old county hospital on Chanate Road. And there must be a focus and a communication to our staff - that every position is important that their voice.” A crisis foretold “The voices of everyone in our organization is so important. “A top-down organization is so ineffective,” she said. She said she is committed to strengthening her department’s presence in those communities, as well as changing the agency’s “top-down” management structure to one that is more inclusive of rank-and-file expertise. “This pandemic, like no other really day-lighted the health inequities that we saw in our marginalized communities.” “In every single disaster, our communities of color, our marginalized communities, bear the greatest burden,” Rivera said. In an interview with The Press Democrat, Rivera, who became permanent health services director in February, acknowledged some of the department’s management problems, as well as lessons learned during the pandemic. Her replacement, Tina Rivera, who was appointed interim director of health services after Robinson’s departure last spring, said she was not part of the discussions to close the public health lab. Robinson, who left Sonoma County a year ago and is now public health director in Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. New leadershipĪccording to interviews with several former health services employees, much of the cost cutting happened under the leadership of former Health Services Director Barbie Robinson, who proposed the closure of the local lab before the pandemic. Over the past two years, it has informed the lifesaving work of the local health officer, epidemiologists, public health nurses, medical workers, educators, local businesses and just about everyone else battling the virus.Īnd now, with the benefit of hindsight, county leaders are once again reciting the mantra of public health prevention, including plans to build a new combined public health lab and morgue, with major costs, projected to be $30 million, expected to be covered by the federal government. Despite ominous brushes with other epidemics like swine flu and bird flu and other rapidly mutating viruses over the past 20 years, local public health agencies across the country have been chronically underfunded for years, experts say, leaving many flat-footed in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic.Īs California’s only public health lab between San Francisco and Humboldt counties, Sonoma County’s facility on Chanate Road in Santa Rosa is one of only 14 labs in the state that are part of a federal network of laboratories that can respond to biological and chemical threats and other public health emergencies. That shift, in part, led to an exodus of numerous top health care employees in the two years before the pandemic hit, as well as instability at the top of the organization.Īnd critics say a greater focus on public health prevention could have laid crucial groundwork for some of the outreach efforts in those communities that were hardest hit by the pandemic, including immigrants and Latino, black and other minority residents. In essence, community-based prevention programs would be sacrificed to pay for those the county is legally required to provide. The idea was quickly scrapped when the pandemic hit, but former county staff members say the proposal reflected a pre-COVID mindset that sought a shift in the mission of county health services. In 2019, a year before anyone had heard of COVID-19 Sonoma County officials were exploring a proposal to close down the county’s public health lab to save money.
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