Caroline County health officer reports staffing gains, Whitsett Center upgrades and program metrics

Robin Cahall, Caroline County health officer, gave a multi-part report May 13 to the Board of County Commissioners outlining public-health staffing, environmental-health permitting, behavioral-health partnerships and local program outcomes.

Cahall said the health department had about 106 active staff (a reported increase of roughly 24% from FY23), with 10 open positions and 16 new hires. She described work to recruit social workers and school-based clinicians and said the department had added a human-resources officer and a director of administration in recent years to support operations.

In environmental health, Cahall told commissioners the department completed 709 permit applications in FY25 (a 10% decrease from FY24). She reported 37 successful percolation tests (perc), 144 well permits, 117 septic permits and 411 other permits. The department licensed 255 facilities and 55 contractors during the period and is transitioning permitting operations to the county’s Llama system with staff training planned for June and a July go-live.

On the AF Whitsett Center, Cahall said the facility was removed from an earlier state “divestiture” list following advocacy and that Governor Wes Moore had earmarked $4,000,000 for infrastructure improvements. Cahall said the center — which serves behavioral-health and substance-use patients — will use part of that funding for boiler and other facility upgrades with work expected to start in summer and complete in late fall or early winter. She said existing federal opioid-response grant funding supports 12 crisis beds at Whitsett for brief stays (about four days) and that in the last year Midshore had helped place 35 individuals transitioning out of state hospitals into community settings through assisted-living funding.

Cahall highlighted several metrics from the state health-improvement plan jurisdictional data: a reported 3% drop in the county’s preterm-birth rate (2021–2022) and reductions in addiction-related and mental-health–related emergency-department visits in recent years. She also noted continuing concerns: asthma-related ED visits rose (the Eastern Shore reported more days of unhealthy air in 2023 than 2022), and the county’s prevalence of diagnosed hypertension increased in recent years — changes Cahall said may reflect both real health trends and improved detection.

The health officer outlined planned board-of-health items for future meetings: an environmental-health fee schedule review (last updated in 2005), standard operating procedures tied to the county’s delegation agreement with Maryland Department of the Environment, and quality-improvement project results to be reviewed by the board. Cahall said the GPR (groundwater protection report) that allows some on-site sewage options in Caroline County will be maintained under the delegation agreement and that her office has been working on 14 MDE guidance documents to support local permitting.

Cahall said the department is building a small-scale mobile integrated health pilot in partnership with emergency services and UMMS Shore Regional Health; the health department added a 0.5 FTE community health nurse to support the initiative beginning July 1 and has applied for a discretionary MDH grant to support personnel costs.

Ending: Commissioners thanked Cahall for the update and asked staff to return with the environmental-health fee-schedule briefing and quality-improvement results at a future board-of-health meeting. Cahall said staff would continue to work with state agencies on delegation and permitting guidance and to share grant- and budget-related impacts to county programs as they are known.