Dan Partridge, director of the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department, will be available Monday to answer questions as part of National Public Health Week.
The health department works to protect and serve the community by:
• Safeguarding community health and safety through swift response to illness outbreaks.
• Identifying urgent and everyday health problems.
• Assessing health problems and promoting wellness by fostering community health initiatives.
• Collaborating with community partners to protect health and control the costs associated with health problems.
Partridge has been director since 2007. Previously, he was associate director with the Reno County Health Department.

jessicaschilling

Before you worked in Lawrence and Douglas County, you were associate director of the Reno County health department. Are there any significant differences in working with the two communities?

Moderator

I would like to welcome Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department Director Dan Partridge to the News Center. I am health reporter Karrey Britt and will be moderating today’s chat. Let’s start off by telling a little about yourself.

Dan Partridge

Thanks for having me on this morning Karrey. I am a Kansas native married for 26 years with 2 sons and a granddaughter. I moved to Lawrence from Hutchinson in 2007 and enjoy the community a great deal.

Marilyn_Hull

I noticed in this year’s rankings that our score on maintaining a healthy environment plummeted because we don’t have enough recreation centers for our population. To what extent is this a valid measure of our overall environment? What other factors, if any, do you think should be assessed?

Dan Partridge

Marilyn,

You have hit upon one of the limitations of the rankings report. When you collapse the entire discussion of health into 27 indicators you are painting with a very broad brush.

The study is limited to national databases with county level data and therefore many valuable and more powerful indicators of health are not included That is one reason why the Health Department commissioned the Kansas Health Institute to compile a list of over 100 indicators of health in order to fill in those gaps. The recreational center indicator is new to this year’s report replacing an indicator on liquor store density.

mfagan

Hello, Dan. How’s the flu been this year in Douglas County? Did we largely avoid it? I’ve known a few people who had been pretty sick this winter, and some into the spring, but the woe seemed like something — lots of coughing, lasted longer than a week, etc. — other than flu. BTW: Like always, I did get a flu shot…

Dan Partridge

The flu season is still lingering on but it does look like this has been a relatively mild year. Your question though gives me an opportunity to say that immunization rates for Lawrence and Douglas County are traditionally lower than the State overall and we run the risk of higher disease rates as a result

mfagan

One more: Do you have a sense about how the Lawrence school district’s handling of budget cuts, regarding school nurses, has affected overall health in the community? Do you worry the district may do more cutting to nursing services, given the state cuts that the district is facing, and likely will continue to face? Could you foresee any (additional) partnership opportunities between the district and the health department?

Dan Partridge

School nurses are important link for us they played a valuable role during our H1N1 response in their reporting of absentee rates and coordinating vaccination clinics in their schools. As budgets get cut everywhere one potential solution that I see happening more and more often is inter-agency collaboration and we should always keep an open mind to new opportunities to work with the school district. I also think we can’t leave out the parents and students in this equation. I encourage parents to immunize their children and students to take advantage of the learning environment our teachers provide.

jestevens

How many people does the health department employ? Do you have enough resources to serve the community? What would you like to do that you cannot?

Dan Partridge

We have 40 employees representing 36.5 FTE’s. Our staff to population ratio is one of the lowest in the State and something I think about a lot. I am proud of how productive and effective staff are but to do the thing we want to do without new staff will be difficult. When I think about our future two things come to mind very quickly. We need to address health behaviors in our community, managing chronic disease needs to become one of our core functions. Secondly we need to look at what we need to do to become an accredited Health Department.

Moderator

I know that the health department is working toward accreditation. Can you explain why this is important and how it is achieved? What does this mean for Douglas County residents?

Dan Partridge

Accreditation is an attempt at the national level to standardize public health practice. Currently public health across the country is fragmented and varies widely from one locale to the next. Accreditation standards are based upon the Institute of Medicines – Future of Public Health framework of the 10 Essential Public Health Services. For more on what these 10 services are and what the Health Department is doing to deliver them check out our 2011 Annual Report posted on our website ldchealth.org
Accreditation is important because it challenges us to grow and improve in ways I think make sense. Three accreditation domains that while we are working on we need to develop a stronger capacity for are 1) Mobilizing community partnerships, 2) Monitoring community health status and 3) Program evaluation and continuous quality improvement

Moderator

Has the Affordable Care Act helped or hurt the health department? What’s your take on health reform? Does it benefit public health?

Dan Partridge

The Affordable Care Act defines some new roles for the Health Department that we are still working to understand and respond to. One part of health care reform that I am currently working on is the exchange of medical information. Access to electronic medical information makes senses for providers in that your medical history will travel with you. It will be a valuable tool for public health in that it could allow us to understand medical screening and immunization rates for our community. Seemingly simple things like how many of us got our flu shot this year are currently not known by any other means than randomly sampling our population and asking them. De-identified health data would also help us identify disease patterns and for example let the Health Department know when antibiotic resistant infectious disease rates spike so that we can inform physicians.

Moderator

How is the health department funded? How has that funding changed during the past year?

Dan Partridge

Our largest revenue stream is local taxes. Historically Douglas County and the City of Lawrence have funded the Health Department at a roughly 60/40 split with Douglas County providing 60% of the local tax support the City of Lawrence 40%. Our next largest funder is the federal government they are the source of funds for most of the grant funds we receive from the State Health Department. Fees make up the balance of our revenues. For more detailed information I refer you to the 2010 Annual Report on our website ldchealth.org

monicataylor

I would imagine there are many local initiatives/services that the community doesn’t realize are made possible in-whole or in-part by the Health Department. Do you have any examples?

Dan Partridge

Staff serve on literally dozens of community Boards. One Board I serve on that is doing great work is LiveWell Lawrence. As a partner organization we have helped get the LiveWell/EatWell restaurant initiative off the ground. We are also working on a community education campaign for the LiveWell Complete Streets initiative that calls for all streets to be safe places for all modes of transportation.

Two other efforts that comes to mind are Project LIVELY; a program where care managers on our staff help the elderly remain safely in their home by completing an Activities of Daily Living Assessment and then helping them to connect to service providers and the complex world of Medicare reimbursement. The second being our Air quality advisory committee that works with community partners primarily on ozone related issues.

ahyland

What’s the greatest public health challenge that you see facing Lawrence and Douglas County in the next 10 years?

Dan Partridge

The challenge will be sustaining the cost of medical care without resorting to some form of rationing. The solution is for each of us to live healthier lives. The challenge behind that solution is to figure out what combination of social and individual change will result in the greatest number of us leading healthier lifestyles.

Moderator

Any advice for residents on how to improve their overall health? What are you doing to live your healthiest life?

Dan Partridge

My advice would be to listen to your physician. If he or she is telling you to lose weight, limit your sodium intake, exercise more, etc. take the plunge and make the effort. If you need help, seek it out. For me personally I have been working with a nutritionist and have lost about 20 pounds since Christmas.

Moderator

Thanks for coming in today. We really appreciate your time.

Dan Partridge

It has been my pleasure. I think the work you and the LJ World do to promote health is great I have not experienced a better social media site for health than what you have created with WellCommons.