This week, the Linn County Board of Health and the Linn County Board of Supervisors released the Linn County Public Health (LCPH) FY15 Annual Report. The release was part of the joint meeting between the Linn County Board of Health and Linn County Board of Supervisors. During the meeting Health Director Pramod Dwivedi highlighted the successes and challenges of public health in Linn County over the past fiscal year (July 2014 to June 2015).
During his highlights, Mr. Dwivedi stressed that LCPH has forged significant partnerships with community organizations and stakeholders, implemented many successful activities and programs, and achieved National Accreditation. His highlights included:
• In March, LCPH became the first health department in Iowa to achieve national accreditation from the Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB). LCPH joins 75 other accredited health departments across the nation.
• LCPH also completed a strategic map which was the result of community-wide engagement of stakeholders. This short-term strategic map gives LCPH the opportunity to improve the quality of the services, focus on customers, engage the community and develop the workforce.
• The Linn County Departments of Secondary Roads and Planning and Development partnered with LCPH to manage the work flow for permitting septic systems and wells, septic time of transfer reports, and requests for environmental services.
• The clinical staff demonstrated an effective surge-response to the Shigella outbreak. During 2014-2015, LCPH witnessed a multi-fold increase in shigellosis. To meet the challenge, LCPH partnered with the health care system, the HACAP Maternal Child Health nurse consultant, the Department of Human Services’ child care consultant, and IDPH staff and were able to contain and stop the spread of shigellosis.
In Iowa, County Boards of Health are appointed by the County Board of Supervisors and have responsibility for overseeing the health of the public within their jurisdiction by assessing needs, setting health goals and priorities, communicating public health information, developing policy to protect the public’s health and enforcing reasonable rules and regulations to improve the health of residents.
The FY15 Linn County Public Health Annual Report is available to the public online at www.linncounty.org/health. For additional updates, residents can also like LCPH on Facebook and follow LCPH on Twitter.