SJC Board of Health June 18, 2025
Three members had excused absences, Geffen, Ruby and Davies. There were no reports for most committees. The North Sound Behavioral Health Organization head Jan Rose will be hold a meeting in the county July 23-25 with state representatives.
The county human services manager gave the annual report for 2024 on mental health programs, senior services, transportation vouchers and opioid funds. Mental health programs in the community and the schools are funded by the .001% sales tax for such services. They provide embedded staff in the three main public schools, a primary intervention program for PreK-third grade for socio-emotional skill building, and the Safe Care program to provide home safety and parenting skills training via home visits. They contract with the family resource centers to provide mental health services for adults who can’t otherwise access mental health services. They manage funds for family dependency and drug treatment courts. They have Senior Services staff on each of the three main islands and one rover and last year served nearly 1500 residents and managed a volunteer force of 109, who among other things provided 40,000 meals. They provided vouchers for ferry, taxi and water taxi services for low-income residents and used opioid settlement funds to provide Narcan kits in the county.
The Community Health manager gave the annual health services report. The Growing Families maternal and child health program provides support for pregnant mothers, babies and toddlers. On average half of babies born to county residents have birth costs covered by Medicaid. The federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) programs focuses on nutrition support including fresh food and breastfeeding support, which is securely funded through April of 2026. The Department filled the public health social worker who is providing case management services to 24 residents. The county is providing reproductive health services in partnership with Planned Parenthood, which is merging with a larger group. They are doing age-appropriate reproductive health education in some of the schools and are looking to expand as the youth community health survey identified this as a high need according to youths.
To combat communicable disease the county tests for tuberculosis, HIV and sexually transmitted diseases and did investigations for 19 different communicable diseases and two outbreaks in 2024. They provided immunizations for flu, covid and back-to-school providing 1112 vaccines to over eight hundred residents mostly school children but also for a small number of uninsured adults. We are still below herd immunity levels of vaccinations for measles in the county. So far in 2025 communicable disease cases have been dropping. There is a recent uptick in Covid cases and measles cases are present in the state.
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