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Ashland County HHS reviews 2024 annual report; public health flags declining immunizations and rising Narcan distribution
Summary
Ashland County’s Health & Human Services Committee reviewed the department’s 2024 annual report, hearing that CLTS enrollment and case complexity rose, child support arrears-collection improved, routine immunizations declined and Narcan distribution increased.
The Ashland County Health & Human Services Committee reviewed its 2024 annual report and departmental updates, hearing highlights from adult services, child support, children and families, the Spark youth program, community services, economic support, fiscal operations and public health.
Public health staff told the committee the tri-county community health needs assessment drew more than 1,000 survey respondents and produced two priority goals: improved awareness of local resources and expanded collaboration on mental-health efforts. The presenter said, “we actually had the largest number of survey respondents with this past cycle that we have ever had ever. There were over a thousand survey respondents with this last cycle.”
Public health staff also flagged a multi-year decline in routine immunizations and described a short-lived outreach grant that raised some childhood immunization activity before funding was reduced in early 2025. The presenter said the county had applied for and received a Routine Immunizations through Community Engagement (RISE) grant and “we did see some positive effect following this, with the immunization rates actually moving up,” but added the RISE funding was later pulled and activities paused.
The committee heard that communicable-disease investigations remained active in 2024, with the staff reporting 686 reported communicable disease investigations and noting increases in Lyme disease reports, hepatitis C, pertussis and some E. coli variants. Public health staff also reported larger Narcan distribution through county and partner channels in 2024 and new grants to supply fentanyl and xylazine test strips for vending-machine distribution.
Other departmental highlights in the annual report included: - Adult services: continued complexity of cases, a decrease in adult emergency detentions and continued growth in CLTS (58 children enrolled at the end of 2024; staff later said current enrollment was about 60). - Child support: staff reported hitting an 83.79% rate on federal arrears-collection performance measures, above the 80% threshold used to allocate additional state funding. A child support presenter said, “in 2024, we were 83.79% in our arrears collection.” - Children and families: 300 child protective services reports in 2024 (down modestly from 316 in 2023); 50 reports were screened in and seven were substantiated; placements decreased from 43 children to 36 with 13 children reunified with families. Erica Paito, manager of the children and families unit, read the unit mission and presented those statistics. - Spark: presenters said multi-year grant funding secured the program for three more years; staff described the program as robust and focused on at-risk youth. - Community services and CCS: staff reported expanded contracted providers and new electronic health records and referral tools that generated dozens of new online referrals. - Economic support: staff reported FoodShare benefit issuance of about $4,000,419.60 for Ashland County in 2024 and listed more than 5,000 people on Medicaid programs with associated medical expenditures; weatherization and energy-assistance referrals remain key services. - Fiscal/EHR transition: fiscal staff said the department is moving from an older accounting system to the county Springbrook system and hoped to complete the transition by year-end.
Public-health updates also covered maternal and child health work, bike-helmet distribution at a May 30 rodeo (about 140 helmets distributed), family planning clinic partnerships (shifted from Northland College to Bad River Harm Reduction for monthly clinics) and a contract change for beach monitoring: Bayfield County Public Health will run lab testing for the county’s beach-monitoring program this season.
Committee members asked questions about immunization funding, public health emergency preparedness contracts and local service distribution; public health staff said negotiations and federal-state timing made several grant lines uncertain for 2025 and 2026.
