Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Public Health topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Surry County recognizes health staff; health department outlines priorities and an outbreak response
Summary
At its May meeting the Surry County Board of Commissioners presented awards to two health department employees, reviewed the county's community health assessment and state health report, and heard about a nursing-home hepatitis B outbreak that led to policy changes and a forthcoming CDC MMWR.
The Surry County Board of Commissioners on a May 2025 meeting recognized staff from the Surry County Health and Nutrition Center and heard presentations on the county's community health assessment and recent communicable-disease work, including an investigation that prompted changes in nursing-home glucometer use.
The presentations matter because the community health assessment (CHA) and the State of the County Health (SOTCH) report guide local public-health planning, funding requests and cross-agency work; the communicable-disease response described led to immediate facility-level policy changes and is being documented for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Health education coordinator Ally Willard presented the CHA and the 2024 SOTCH, noting the CHA is produced every four years and the SOTCH is produced in intervening years. Willard told the board the CHA combines community statistics with residents' voices to identify priorities and to shape programs. She said the county's top three priority issues remain substance use, mental health and overweight/obesity and that the CHA 'helps to guide strategic planning and secure funding' for programs addressing those problems.
Willard said the county will shift more toward focus groups for the 2026 CHA to reach underrepresented populations, adding that surveys often miss populations who most need services. She also noted the county received a state certificate recognizing the 2023 community health improvement plan and the 2024 SOTCH and that Surry County has been invited to lead a fall 2025 workshop for other counties on the results-based-accountability framework the county used.
Ashley Vaughn, lead communicable-disease nurse and tuberculosis nurse for Surry County, described an April 2024 investigation of an acute hepatitis B case in a nursing home. Vaughn said after an investigation involving county staff, the state and the CDC the team concluded the transmission resulted from a contaminated shared glucometer. She said the facility adopted a practice of assigning a dedicated glucometer to each patient to eliminate that transmission risk and that the case is being prepared for publication in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
Vaughn also briefed the board on preparedness for potential measles cases, noting no measles cases had been reported in North Carolina at the time of the meeting and the closest case had been in northeastern Virginia. She said the county has protocols for isolation, contact tracing and post-exposure vaccination and is coordinating with state guidance. Vaughn summarized other communicable-disease trends: respiratory illnesses peak in the winter months, and she reported seven flu deaths in the county this season compared with two the prior year.
Board members praised the health department staff and presented certificates to both employees. The chairman read certificates recognizing Vaughn's role in the hepatitis B response and Willard's work on the community health report.
The health department materials and the CHA/SOTCH were available in the commissioners' packets, and Willard encouraged board members and the public to review them.
